


suspended like spirits over speeding cars

by smileymikey



Category: Outer Banks (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Rock Band, F/M, Journalist!Kiara, POV Alternating, musician!jj
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-29
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:48:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27782503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smileymikey/pseuds/smileymikey
Summary: There’s the fourth member, too. JJ. Bass, the boy who sounded like every sun she had watched crawl over the horizon from the beach. The boy whose gaze she had met in the crowd like their eyes were magnets seeking each other out. Quietest onstage, but used his instrument like he was born with it. He doesn’t go for a towel or a journalist: instead, one of the roadies come up to him, takes his bass, then tapes up his thumb with gaffa tape and cotton wool. There’s a line of dried blood that runs down the inside of his palm, and he sucks it into his mouth, pink mouth becoming even pinker. His hair, dusty blond, dark gold with perspiration, sticks to his forehead.Kie thinks, oh.or, Kiara is a music journalist waiting for her big break, and JJ is the bassist in a band that might just be the answer.
Relationships: JJ/Kiara (Outer Banks)
Comments: 51
Kudos: 111





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> title from soco amaretto lime by brand new (thx sarah for ur epic playlist)
> 
> also an fyi: i have no knowledge of music journalism. this may all be incredibly inaccurate and i apologise to any actual music journalists out there.

There’s a sign above Peterkin’s head that says SHOW NO WEAKNESS, SHOW NO MERCY, and for the first time it’s not the most daunting thing in the room. Kie’s been staring at it for close to what feels like ten minutes at this point, which is a long time to be sat staring at a poster that probably came from the barracks, all the while silently picking at a hangnail under the desk and jogging her foot up and down. (She tries not to let it show on her face, though, lest Peterkin starts snapping to her about not having a winner’s expression, or whatever drivel.)

Peterkin has never been the most expressive of women, but Kie can’t help feeling a little unnerved at the lack of anything. She’s probably _excellent_ in poker.

It’s not a long proposal, either: Kie had typed up just under a page of A4, with another sheet with a handful of screengrabs taken from concert videos she’d found online. It definitely should not take ten minutes to read (though it’s infinitely better than the alternative of her not reading it all). Peterkin hasn’t even just touched the pages from where Kie slid them across the desk, just sits silently reading them, eyes flicking from page to page, comparing information against each other. Four members, one with hair like coal, another with hair like snow, the other two in between. One girl, three boys: keyboard, bass, drums, guitar. She sees her pause over the words Outer Banks, and silently crosses her fingers together under the desk.

The clock has just ticked away the fourteenth minute when finally, Peterkin sits back in her chair, fingers under her chin. “You put together a convincing case,” she says.

Kie just nods.

For the first time, Peterkin touches a finger to the pages, right on top of the location. “You grew up in the same area,” she says.

Kie is a little touched she knows that, before remembering Peterkin is also probably part robot with endless memory storage. “Yes,” she says.

“Do you know them?”

“Personally? No.”

In theory, though? Absolutely. She went to school with Sarah Cameron (keys, the only girl), is pretty sure she even spoke to her a handful of times. They didn’t exist in the same circles, because Sarah was the kind of girl who would always be the centre of a room, whilst Kie existed somewhere near the back stress-eating the refreshments, and they took none of the same classes: but she lingered in her peripheral long enough to be a surprise when she showed up in a local paper behind a keyboard, surrounded by boys (drums, guitar, bass) from the other side of the Island. Now, _them_ , she doesn’t know so well, only abstractly, in the way she knows of all boys from The Cut – but some Pogues and the richest Kook on the island making their name through the seedy underground of punk bars?

It felt a little like magnetism; a little like fate.

Peterkin’s gaze is steely. “And what makes you think I’d let you go on a paid goose chase across the States following some band?”

This is what Kie’s been waiting for. She sits up a little straighter, sets her shoulders, and tucks her crossed fingers under her leg. “Because,” she says, “I’m a good writer. Because this is a story that means a lot to me, and because yesterday you talked at the editor’s meeting that you’ve been meaning to push our demographic, and I think this is a really good starting point. An up-and-coming punk band from the undergrowth of North Carolina – a band no news outlets have managed to even get so much as _interview_ with? I think this is just what you need.”

“What makes you different?” Peterkin says. “How can you be so sure they’ll let you be the one to get the story?”

“I have a good feeling about it.”

Peterkin holds her gaze, and Kie breaks.

“And I already emailed their manager,” she says.

And then, as rare as a double rainbow, Peterkin’s lips twitch into a fucking smile. “Well, then, Carerra,” she says. “The story’s yours.”

*

Kie has always had a thing for angry revolutionist punk music.

She thinks it was born somewhere during her time at the Kook Academy, when she would stomp around in her Mary Janes learning about the corrupt capitalist system and needed some sort of outlet for all her steadily growing anger. (Growing up as a budding anarchist in one of the most manicured areas of North Carolina probably fed into it too.) Of course, she’s no longer fifteen and angry at everything, and she’s also gotten the fuck out of Figure Eight, but there’s something still smouldering in the back of her mind that she sometimes likes to get into, residue from teenage Kiara who would crossly tug at her school tie and draw on the insides of her pleated skirt during Econ.

It’s what led her to The Pogues, anyway: a trip down a YouTube rabbit hole late one night, flicking through the music videos of all her old favourite bands, when, just past two am, far drunker than she had any right to be when she had work the next day, something autoplayed. Something dirty and grungy, something with bass that reverberated her spine and told a tale of longing, of _want_ and anger and frustration. It was a camera-phone video from a dimly-lit concert, shaky enough that Kie could see the entire room with just a few degrees to the left and right. It couldn’t be anything bigger than a bar, but it was still full. The person filming was too far back and the quality was too grainy for her to be able to make out anything other than four people onstage, either three dudes and a girl or four dudes, one of whom had very long hair, and Kie was too drunk to think much other than _I like this song_ to pay any further mind.

Then, the next week, she’d caught sight of Sarah Cameron, the epitome of everything she hated about Figure Eight, in the local paper, behind a keyboard, long hair flying, almond eyes lined in eyeliner, next to the line _The Pogues: The Emerging Punk Band You’ve Never Heard Of_.

From there, it was history.

It was an itch she couldn’t scratch, knowing that the most popular, promising girl at school had turned to music in seedy underground bars. The very thought of Sarah Cameron in a punk band felt like a juxtaposition in itself, and deep down Kie was privately more than a little irritated by it. Sarah thinks she can come into something that celebrates the very antithesis of everything she represents? (Teenage Kie would have been a lot meaner.)

She’d dug deeper, on curiosity rather than anything else; found that the three boys were from The Cut, attended public school and between them had a criminal record probably the length of the declaration of independence. She’d found that online, too, mainly just small charges like noise complaints, destruction of property – predominately Kook – and in one case, the sinking of a one Topper Thornton’s expensive boat. Topper Thornton, who she’s pretty sure she remembers Sarah dating throughout senior year.

Her eyebrows lifted. Huh.

Other than that, their existence on the Internet was limited to shoddy iPhone videos and short pieces from local papers about live shows. No interviews, no website – nothing. She’d tracked down a Facebook page which seemed to be their central hub, though it had mainly served to confuse her more, because who the hell still uses a Facebook? Seemed to work, though, because their page was filled with comments about how much people enjoyed the shows and pictures of fans in merchandise. The official band account didn’t seem to be hugely active, only posting about upcoming show locations – all small venues, Kie noted – and occasionally responding to various other comments.

(Sort of amusedly, Kie noted that there were at least two very different people who mainly used the account. One responded to fan comments usually in lowercase, with typed-out emoticons, as though they were still living in an alternate timeline where Facebook was still the predominant social media platform and emojis didn’t exist, and the other in all caps with a surplus of sparkly emojis. She amused herself with the idea it was one of the guys.)

She’d hunted down a CD, bought it only because on the back of the front cover was a photo. Their contact details were buried in the bio of the Facebook page, and on a whim, before even asking Peterkin, she’d shot off an email asking for the potential of an interview.

Honestly, she hadn’t been anticipating much. The manager of the Pogues had an email address that looked like it belonged to someone who still wrote in a diary with glitter gel pens. The response she got didn’t make her feel any more confident that it wasn’t.

From: sneezywheezyglittersparklez300@hotmail.com

To: kiara.carerra@thekildarenews.com

_Hi Kiara,_

_Thank you for your email! That’s totally cool that you would reach out. I’ve never read your magazine but I googled it and it looks very professional, like something my dad would read, or keep on a coffee table, so kudos for that. To be totally honest, I was gonna throw your email out, but then Sarah spoke on your behalf and I decided against it. (No offence.) Apparently you guys knew each other in high school? That’s super sick. You know in high school I used to run a sticker business. Very lucrative. Probably made more than you do now._

_Anywhoozles, the band is totally down for a view! (That’s what the kids call an interview, FYI.) Send over your deets and we can work something out_

_Wheezie xoxoxo_

_Sent from my iPhone_

There were even _customised emojis_. Kie stared at them very hard.

But now Peterkin has given her permission, and _that_ weight is off her shoulders, the gravity of what she’s signing up today is like a flash-bomb in the pit of her stomach. It’s not just even coming face to face with Sarah after all these years – Sarah, who somehow remembered her, despite the fact that they could not have spun in more different social circles – though that’s enough to make her feel a little queasy.

This could be her big break. She’s been busting her ass at The Kildare News for months now with little to no success, other than short featurettes about the hot tourist spots or the new barber’s that opened up down the road, and the idea that now she finally gets the piece she’s been dying for – a piece that no other journalist anywhere has managed to secure – she’s more than a little terrified. Jesus, what if the band is terrible? What if she’s terrible? What the fuck does she even _bring_?

 _One thing at a time, Kie_ , she tells herself. _For now you’ve just got an interview. Calm your tits_.

She emails Wheezie the manager back with her details and the possibility of a meeting between the two of them. In response, Wheezie sends a gif of Kim Kardashian and _meetings are for old people._ Kie stares at it until three minutes later, another email comes through.

_Are you free tomorrow? You can do your business talk with Sarah._

And with it, Sarah’s email.

Kie won’t lie when she says her heart thumps a little as she hovers her mouse over it. She doesn’t really know what she was expecting, but definitely not to be in direct communication with the band so early. And not just anyone: Sarah Cameron.

Sarah Cameron, who vouched for her. Sarah Cameron, who’s probably the only fucking reason she has this job.

Kie steels herself, and copies the address.

*

Sarah is already seated when Kie arrives.

She spots her through the glass storefront, sat at a table tucked away in the corner, already perusing a menu. She is turned away so all Kie can see is the tan line of her shoulders and a wide-brimmed sunhat, long honeyed hair spilling down beneath it. It’s been a few years, but this is exactly how Kie remembers her being. No one else could get away with wearing a sunhat like that other than Sarah Cameron.

Sarah doesn’t spot her until she is only a few feet away from the table, and even then Kie has to uncomfortably clear her throat to get her to look up from the menu. Honestly, she’s not sure what she’s expecting – probably the close-lipped polite smile she has become accustomed to receiving from the people she’s meeting, in the way she supposes anyone would do when a stranger is being invited into their life with the capability to ruin their career – but certainly not for her to grin broadly, and pull her heart-shaped sunglasses down her nose to look at her properly.

“Well, shit,” she says, “it _is_ you. Kiara Carerra!”

It’s enough to startle a laugh out of her, and she feels any tension in her shoulders drop. “Sarah Cameron,” she greets, as she takes the seat across from her. “I wasn’t sure you’d remember me.”

Sarah takes her sunglasses all the way off – but not the hat – and rests her chin on her closed fist. “The girl petitioned against the building of restaurants along the coastline as to not ruin the aquatic ecosystems? Of course I do. It’s nice to see you again.”

It couldn’t have been her academic prowess, or anything. Well. “You, too,” Kie says. “How long has it been? Four years? Five?”

“Five, I think. You look just how I remembered you to look.”

“That’s unfortunate,” Kie says, only half-joking. (She had braces and exclusively talked about socialism. Which, granted, is not a far cry from who she is now, but at least now her boobs have come in and she can properly wing her eyeliner.)

Sarah just laughs. “No, you know what I mean. You look good! Like you’ve grown into yourself.”

She is the kind of girl to get away with these types of compliments, make them effortlessly cool instead of sort of strange. Kie hadn’t realised she’d paid that much attention. “You, too,” she says honestly: because while _keyboardist in a punk band_ had never been the first thought to come to mind in Sarah Cameron Word Association, the fact she’s doing so in her pink crop tops and expensive necklaces feels almost ridiculously fitting. “When I saw your picture in the paper I almost couldn’t believe it.”

Sarah raises an eyebrow. “What, I don’t strike you as the type to join a band?”

Kie’s gaze drops to the heart-shaped glasses. She isn’t sure if she’s joking. “Uh...”

Luckily, Sarah just laughs. “Kidding,” she says. “Trust me, you’re not the only one who thought the same. Dad almost haemorrhaged when I told him I wasn’t going to college.”

“He must have thought you mad,” Kie agrees. “I mean, a Figure Eight girl becoming something other than a trophy wife?”

For a split second, she thinks she’s stepped too far, and her blood runs cold at her big mouth ruining something for her again, but then Sarah laughs so hard the table shakes, and relief floods her body. “Jesus, Kie, you bitch,” she says, but joyously, like she’s glad. “I don’t need to ask what you’re doing, then. Journalism?”

“That’s me.”

“No turtles?”

“Jesus, my legacy,” Kie groans, and Sarah smirks. “No, no turtles.”

“I didn’t know you liked writing.”

“I didn’t know you liked music,” Kie counters.

Sarah grins at her, and all of a sudden Kie feels like she’s just passed some sort of unspoken test. “Touché,” she says. “Shall we order? I’m sort of hungry.”

She flags over a waiter before Kie even has time to respond, or in the very least glance down at the menu, and rattles off a complicated-sounding meal with a coffee order that would require a scroll the length of a fucking piano to remember. The waiter turns to Kie, looking a little flustered.

“And for you, miss?” he says. Kie takes pity on him.

“Just a black coffee, thanks,” she says, and he visibly deflates in relief. “As for a meal...”

She glances down at her menu. She hadn’t eaten all morning because she had been so anxious about the meeting, but now the knot of tension in her tummy has eased a little, she finds she’s starving.

“I’d recommend the eggs benedict,” Sarah says, as if she can read her thoughts. “It’s my personal favourite.”

Kie raises her eyebrows, but folds her menu closed and hands it to him. “I’ll have that, then.”

He takes them gratefully, bobs, and then disappears into the kitchen.

“Jesus,” Kie says, “I didn’t know a coffee order could have that many parts. God bless your baristas.”

“I like to leave a mark,” Sarah says. “Besides, he’s clearly new.”

Kie raises an eyebrow. “You come here a lot?”

“Used to, back at Kook Academy.”

“Really?”

It’s out before she can stop it. Sarah grins at her. “You’re such a bitch,” she says. “Yes. I know. Sarah Cameron frequenting a place where the cheapest meal isn’t over twenty dollars.”

Kie winces. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s okay. Really,” she says, when she sees Kie’s disbelieving expression. “I get it. I know what I must’ve looked like in high school. This just... I don’t know. This was a nice place to come to when the expectations got too high. You know? Like, away from everything. All the eyes.”

Kie watches her. “But... being in a band. Isn’t that just more eyes?”

Sarah shakes her head. “Not like that. Not like they’re waiting for me to mess up. I know that’s what everything was waiting for, back then. My fall from grace. Now I’ve already... fallen, you know? Can’t get any worse than running away and joining a punk band.” She smiles, a touch wryly. “They’re not looking at me like I’m the Kook Princess, about to make the mistake of my life. To them, I already have.”

Involuntarily, Kie feels the corner of her mouth twitch up. “Still,” she says. “I... shouldn’t have stereotyped. I mean, I should’ve known, right?” She gestures towards her, and Sarah laughs. “And for what it’s worth? I always thought you were the nicest of them.”

Sarah’s gaze becomes consideringly hopeful. “Really?”

“Pretty sure you’re the only one who remembers my petition as anything other than _cringey_.”

“I should’ve spoken to you,” Sarah says. “Can you imagine how unstoppable we would’ve been?”

Kie grins. “The socialist and the princess. Kook Academy wouldn’t have known how to handle us.”

“It’s why I vouched for you, you know,” Sarah says. “When Wheezie showed me the email and I saw your address I just knew that this was the story we had to do.”

Kie stills. “Seriously?”

“I trust you with us. More than other soulless journalists.”

“You’ve had a few requests?”

Sarah rolls her eyes. “Here and there. Lot of people like the story: two ends of the class spectrum coming together, one from privilege, the other three not – you know, the sort of shit they know readers will eat up. Wheezie’s become pretty good at dodging emails.”

Unsurprisingly, that is not a shock. “You really accepted my offer because you knew me from high school?”

Sarah shrugs, entirely unself-consciously. “Sure,” she says, simply. “I remembered you. You were hard-working and always favoured the truth.” Good to know that one of them clearly hasn’t repressed the memory of Kie’s _fake news_ phase at fifteen. “I mean, with all your activism I can’t say I was expecting you to emerge five years later as a writer, probably in the same way you probably weren’t expecting me to appear in a band. But... I don’t know. If anyone was going to do us right, it would be you.”

Kie feels her heartrate begin to pick up. “So... you’re accepting my offer?”

Sarah blinks. “Haven’t we already?”

“Your manager was pretty ambiguous on that front.”

Sarah snorts. Before she can respond, the waiter appears with their food, sliding it in front of them with a polite, “Your meals.” They are both momentarily distracted as they thank him and begin to dig in, silence settling over them for a few seconds. (Unsurprisingly, the eggs benedict is pretty fucking good.)

After a short pause, Sarah says, “We’d love to have you. Seriously.”

Kie smiles. “Yeah?”

“Well, it’s not entirely selfless,” Sarah says, “I’ve always wanted to know how I’d be described,” and Kie rolls her eyes. “I was waiting for a writer to fall in love with me and then write a poetry collection after I break his heart about how great I was in bed and how nice my eyes were, but this works, too.”

“Sarah Cameron: biggest bitch I’ve ever met. Ass like a pancake.”

“Fuck _you_! I do squats!”

“In denial,” Kie continues, and Sarah laughs so hard it comes out in a snort. “The last person you’d want to comfort you in hospital. Bedside manner of a mangey dog. Probably not even that great at piano.”

Sarah aims a poor kick at her leg under the table, and Kie kicks her back. She is surprised to find it’s the most she’s laughed in a long time.

“Well, in that case,” Sarah says, but she’s grinning. “No, we’d love you with us. Me and the boys: you’ll have to meet them at some point before you join us on tour. Which... you’re doing, right?”

Kie chews thoughtfully on one of her hash browns. “I have funding for a month,” she says. “I’m scheduled to be with you probably until you reach California. If all goes well, anyway.”

Sarah waves her hand dismissively. “Of course it will. You’ll fit right in with us.”

As someone who spent most of her adolescence _not fitting in_ , it warms something in her chest to hear that coming from someone who probably never had a problem with it.

“You’ll meet the whole team before we leave, of course,” Sarah continues. “The boys, obviously, and Wheezie, and our sound technician and all the roadies. You’re joining us from the tenth, right? After our Columbia show?”

“Yeah.”

“Our show in Richmond is a few days after that, so we’ll leave on the eighth. You should join us for breakfast that day before we start driving in the evening! I can introduce you to everyone and you can spend a few hours with us on the ground before we pack you in the bus.” She takes a sip of her coffee. “As much as I love the boys, having another girl there will be so nice.”

Kie raises her eyebrows. “Wheezie not much of a reprieve?”

Sarah snorts. “Wheezie is the opposite of a reprieve. Someone like me, I mean. I’m glad you’ll be there.”

“Maybe I’m a terrible roommate. What if I snore?”

“Worse than three boys? Unlikely.” Sarah grins at her over the rim of her cup, dark eyes glittering in the daylight. “I think we’re gonna have a lot of fun, Kie.”

Yeah. Kie thinks so, too.

*

Maybe it’s sentimentality, or an insatiable curiosity about the most inexplicable group on the planet, but Kie purchases a ticket to the Columbia show.

She knows that she’ll be with them in the morning, that over the course of the next month she’ll be witness to so many of their shows that the pound of their music will become as engrained in her DNA as it is theirs, but the itch at seeing then live doesn’t allow her to wait another few days for their next tour date. She books the cheapest, closest hotel to stay in overnight and brings her suitcase that is packed full with clothes: tries to Google _what to bring when you’re on tour_ but is only left with aeroplane hacks and a blog from a girl who spent the summer after her senior year chasing a band across the states with nothing but a pack of gum and condoms, so instead packs twelve pairs of socks and the first two books from her Judy Blume box set.

It’s an hour drive from her tiny box-cupboard of an apartment in the Outer Banks to the venue, and she spends it listening to The Pogues’ debut EP for the first time. It’s the CD she managed to track down when she first fell down the rabbit-hole, nineteen and a half minutes long and encased in a slippery brown pamphlet with their faces on the front.

Unsurprisingly, it’s good. It’s really fucking good. The first song is just under four minutes and throughout the entirety there’s a whiny electric guitar that grits at something under her ribs. Over the top, a male voice: _John B Routledge_ , the pamphlet says, on the lyrics. Kie wonders what the B stands for. At a red light she looks at their faces on the cover and tries to guess which one he is.

The entire thing is only five tracks long, and she lets every single of them seep into her bones as she drives: plays each song four times before moving onto the next. They’re fun, loud, angry and homemadeand, homemade in a way that is charming rather than grating. It’s exactly the kind of music she would have blasted at full volume in her bedroom back at Figure Eight when she was sixteen, lying on her floor with her feet up against the door and staring up at the ceiling, and it tugs at a heartstring so keenly she is hit with a sudden wave of nostalgia so sharp it makes something in her almost ache.

Jesus fucking Christ. Sarah Cameron did it well.

The last song, though -- the last song is her favourite. It plays when she is on the interstate only fifteen minutes from the venue, having drained the other four songs for every note they were worth with the previous forty-five. As soon as it starts, something dark and sad and yearning and _hungry_ , she knows.

It is the shortest song, just over two minutes. Every second is used to its potential, filled with weeping keys and a keening guitar, and a bassline that she can feel reverberate between her ribs. And then, over the top: a male voice. One she hasn’t heard before on the other four tracks.

Something gritty and sad and beautiful. It sounds like North Carolina in a way the others haven’t: there is an accent to it, something that feels like the waning sun in autumn, hours at a time in between the waves on a surfboard.

At a red light, she checks the name.

JJ Maybank.

He takes the whole song: uncharacteristically, as she is learning. This John B Routledge takes the choruses most often, frontman, probably, but this last track is all JJ. Routledge has a voice for a frontman, something palatable that turns angry, frustrated songs into something just digestible enough to make it onto radio, but JJ sounds how like she felt at Kook Academy. Strangled on her tie, trapped in her uniform, wanting nothing more than to scream.

When the song ends, Kie pulls over to the side of the road, rests her head against the steering wheel, and just breathes.

This is either the worst mistake or best decision of her life.

*

The concert is in a venue no bigger than a school hall. There are no seats, only a dance floor backed all the way back to the bar, filled with writhing, shouting bodies, with thickly black-lined eyes and at least four facial piercings.

Kie sits at the back sipping her flat beer and thinks, _this. This is it_.

Onstage, the band is magnetic. They feel like they are in another realm up there: separated from the crowd with an elevated platform, sweat pouring down their faces, hair flying. They are giants, witches, something phantasmagorical and beautiful and inexplicably compelling. The music pours from speakers stacked either side of the stage, backlit with huge stage lights, like something from a movie.

Sarah’s hair forms a halo around her head. The lead guitarist, with the shaggy hair and headband, croons into his microphone as the drummer kicks them into gear. Kie can feel every thump of the base drum rattle her skeleton, finds herself swept up in its beat, until she is part of the writhing, swarming mass on the floor, arms above her head: amorphous, intangible, an indistinguishable body responding to a siren call.

In the final chorus of the last song, when it pulls back right before it crashes in, she spins into the middle of the dance floor and risks a glance up at the band onstage, almost close enough to touch. From her vantage point she can see their legs, the strong hands on the guitar fretboard, close enough until every breath into the microphone she feels in her whole body.

She looks up even higher: meets a pair of eyes so blue they look like they are filled with seawater. Framed with sweaty blond hair and dark blond eyelashes, in a face streaked with perspiration on a body playing a bass guitar as easily if it were a second limb.

Their gazes cannot be holding each other for longer than a few seconds, until the chorus crashes in and she is swept back into the crowd, but for those seconds she feels like she is suspended on a precipice, hand outstretched. Like the boy attached to those eyes was reaching for her too.

She closes her eyes, and lets the music carry her away.

*

After, it’s a little like this:

Backstage, dark and dimly-lit, filled with people. There’s a girl in glasses who looks about twelve sat on a picnic chair amidst the chaos, swinging her access all area pass on her finger like a ring of keys and scrolling through her phone, which is fluffy and has bunny ears. Kie learns quickly that this is Manager Wheezie: partially because it’s what she introduces herself as to Kie and the other journalists, mostly because the back of her chair is emblazoned with _Wheezus Christ Superstar._ From where she’s stood, Kie has a good view of her phone screen, which is currently playing _10 Things I Hate About You._

The house lights of the venue have come up, and the stage, previously turned sultry and studded and mysterious from the magnetism of the band, becomes ugly and mundane again. The band, slick with sweat and drenched probably through their clothes, come through the side: The Pogues, in the flesh.

Next to her, the journalists’ eyes widen like they have just landed on their prey.

Kie has to admit, they’re impressive up close. Even Sarah, who she’d known through the tail-end of puberty, who’d she’d been sat across from a fucking week ago, feels like a wholly different person. They are like giants, the four of them, and the stage is their kingdom. Them in the normalcy of backstage feels like they have climbed down a beanstalk to a normal land and are wading through waist-high houses.

She hangs back as the other journalists shyly surge forward; instead, watches. Pope – drums – moves straight for a towel, throws one behind him to John B – guitar – who catches it without so much as batting an eyelid and says hello to the journalists like they’re all old friends. He’s good with them, she notes: doesn’t condescend like he’s a celebrity. Asks them all for their names, apologises for the sweat. _Natural leader_ , she thinks.

Sarah gets a towel as well, and a bottle of water, brushes her long hair out of her face. One of the temps can’t stop looking at her. Kie doesn’t blame them. She never knew she had a thing for fishnets until she saw them on Sarah Cameron.

There’s the fourth member, too. JJ. Bass, the boy who sounded like every sun she had watched crawl over the horizon from the beach. The boy whose gaze she had met in the crowd like their eyes were magnets seeking each other out. Quietest onstage, but used his instrument like he was born with it. He doesn’t go for a towel or a journalist: instead, one of the roadies come up to him, takes his bass, then tapes up his thumb with gaffa tape and cotton wool. There’s a line of dried blood that runs down the inside of his palm, and he sucks it into his mouth, pink mouth becoming even pinker. His hair, dusty blond, dark gold with perspiration, sticks to his forehead.

Kie thinks, _oh_.

Across the room, Sarah meets her eyes, gives her a wink. Her mascara has miraculously not budged from around her eyes. (Kie’s melted off somewhere between the third and fourth song.) She takes a sip of water and then passes it to JJ, who takes it wordlessly and drains the rest in one go without unsealing his mouth from around the rim. It’s a lot hotter than it has any right to be.

“All right, time’s up.” That’s Wheezie, rising from her chair. Standing, she is about a foot shorter than everyone. “The band needs to freshen up and get back. Thanks for your time everyone.”

Kie’s only starting with them in the morning, so tonight she leaves the rest of journalists. Tomorrow, though -- tomorrow she joins them on the road, will see them up close in startling clarity, away from stage lights and the smudge of night-time. Sarah makes a call-me sign with her hand as she is ushered through the door, and Kie turns around to give her a small thumbs-up – in doing so, she accidentally makes eye contact with JJ, who is giving her an inscrutable look.

She pauses.

Did you feel it too? she wants to ask. Did you see me in the crowd? Do you recognise me?

But she doesn’t. She just leaves with the rest of the journalists who are all excitedly chattering amongst themselves, mind whirring.

This is going to be an interesting month.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank u to annie for beta-ing, helping me come up with the title, and gently bullying me for my overuse of colons. u r the best. also to the gc who never cease to be lovely :-]
> 
> [tumblr](https://smileymikey.tumblr.com/)


	2. Chapter 2

“Group huddle, come on.”

John B does this before every show. They all dutifully crowd around him, arms slinging over each other’s shoulders. Today JJ has Sarah and Pope on each side, feels Pope’s nervous energy thrum through his side and the flick of Sarah’s bracelets against his neck as she pulls him in close. Their temples all touch.

“What’re we praying for this time, Pastor John?” JJ says. It’s a joke he makes most shows, mostly because it hasn’t stopped being funny.

John B, as usual, ignores him. “All right, gang,” he says. “We’re gonna go out there and make it a good one, yeah? Let’s bring the fucking house down.”

“Fuck yeah,” Pope says, tries for a fist-pump that makes them all stumble a little, this eight-legged, four-headed monster-creature that they are. Even when they pull apart to go onstage, they will still be stitched together, pulled with invisible strings that keep them careering together.

John B calls it family. Sarah calls it separation anxiety. Whatever it is, JJ feels it like it is tangible, like they are ribbons on a maypole, dancing around and winding closer and closer together until the music stops.

“I fucking _love_ you guys,” John B says. He bumps his head against Pope and Sarah’s from where they’re next to him, and then beams at JJ across the circle. JJ reaches around Pope’s neck to shove at his dopey grinning face, and then links it in his hair and pulls him close until he can press their foreheads together. Sarah hooks a finger in the string around his neck. “You ready?”

“Born ready, baby,” she says. “Let’s do this.”

And then they pull back.

Showtime.

*

The band forms mostly by accident.

JJ picks up an instrument for the first time when he is thirteen: undergrown, with disproportional limbs and lots of rage. It’s out of necessity more than genuine interest, having run dry every other excuse to stay in school just an hour longer after the bell went. John B’s soccer coach had stopped letting him sit in on after-school practices and the disgruntled teachers who ran extracurriculars wouldn’t let him into their classrooms, not believing that JJ Maybank would be willing to join Sewing Club. (Which, granted, wasn’t a baseless accusation, but fuck them anyway.)

It was this that brought him to the music rooms for the first time. They were the only refuge he had left, because no one used them, due to the fact that they were tucked away at the very end of the school and always felt perpetually damp, like they were situated in the middle of a marsh.

(Besides, rumour has it, the music teacher _died_ in one of them. JJ totally believes it.)

Still, they’re a good enough hiding spot. He reckons he could wait it out in one of them until six when the janitor comes to clean and lock up, except there’s also nothing to fucking _do_ here. He can’t even look at the window and watch John B’s soccer practice because it’s at the other end of the school.

It’s this that leads him to pick up a guitar.

Initially, it’s just to pass the time. In the first week, he does a rotation around all the instruments, seeing which one fits. The drums are cool but too loud, and he has no doubt if someone caught him in here, he’d be kicked out in an instant; the piano is stupid and there are too many notes; and he’s going anywhere _near_ any of the wind instruments. The single year he spent puffing at a recorder in second grade not only proved his utter ineptitude for it but also pretty much put him off the idea of orchestra forever.

The guitar, though – the guitar is cool. He’s always liked the sound of it: his mom used to listen to Joni Mitchell a lot. She’d always play her CDs around the house, Fleetwood Mac’s, too; take JJ’s hands and swing him around, crooning along to the music, _thunder only happens when it’s raining_ , and JJ would sometimes sing along because she’d smile wide whenever he did.

He doesn’t do that anymore. For one, his mom’s gone. And secondly, his dad doesn’t seem to like much of anything these days.

His dad broke most of his mom’s CDs after she died, but JJ managed to salvage a few before he found those, too: just some stupid ABBA album he hates and a single from a disco group that skips a little at the minute-mark. But there are others, too, music she didn’t play around the house, a whole shoebox he found under her bed that his dad didn’t. They’re old, these ones, a lot of cassettes he can’t play because they don’t have a tape player, labelled in black Sharpie with years that feel prehistoric to him. He didn’t even realise they had music players in 1982. He thought in those days people still travelled by horse and did wall carvings.

He hides one of the playable CDs to school in his backpack, something by The White Stripes, and then, at the end of the day, when John B mournfully leaves to go to soccer practice, he sneaks off to the music room and puts it in the CD player on top of the piano. It screeches to life and makes a few questionable whirring sounds that make JJ a little afraid it’s going to blow up, until finally it then starts coughing up actual music.

For two weeks, that CD is the only thing listens to, as he painstakingly learns the song note by note as he tries to match the notes on the guitar to the ones he hears in the music. And after he’s learned that one, he sneaks in another CD, and another, and another. After a while, it stops becoming a reason to stay away from home: instead, it becomes something he finds himself almost looking forward to, the two hours spent after school in the drippy music room with one of the beat-up acoustics in his lap.

When soccer season ends and John B has afternoons after school off free, he teaches him to play too.

“Dude,” John B says breathlessly, after he played his first song through fully. He looks at JJ with wide eyes. “This is so cool. I feel like...”

“Jimi Hendrix?” JJ offers.

“Blake Shelton,” John B says, and JJ decides there and then to burn Big John’s country music collection as soon as he can.

Pope arrives a little later.

When they first meet, Pope is scrawny and awkward and carrying what looks like a trumpet twice the size of him in both height and girth. He’s also apparently the only other person who comes to the music rooms so he can practice for the school band. They don’t cross paths for a long while because the orchestra – which he’s also part of – uses the gym in the autumn. He catches JJ there one day trying to see if the amp propped against the wall will work if it gets plugged in, currently on his hands and knees under the piano searching for a wire that hasn’t been chewed by rats.

“Hello?”

“Jesus!” JJ yelps, and then “ _fuck_!” as he shoots up and slams his head on the underside of the piano. When he emerges, clutching the back of his head, he sees Pope standing in the doorway with his trumpet looking a little afraid. “You scared the shit out of me.”

“You can’t be in here,” Pope says. “This is band only.”

JJ rubs his wounded head. “You gonna tell on me?”

Pope’s gaze falters, and he glances away. His eyes slide to the guitar rack behind him, and JJ feels his breath catch in his throat; instead, he determinedly gnaws on the inside of his cheek.

“Was that you, playing the guitar?” Pope says, finally.

“No.”

“It sounded like it was.”

JJ folds his arms. “Okay, so maybe it was. Are you the guitar police?”

“I didn’t know you could play guitar.”

“Well, I can.”

“You’re really good.”

“Thanks.”

There’s staunch silence. Pope chews on his bottom lip. “Was it... The song you were playing. The Kinks, right?”

JJ blinks. “You know them?”

“They’re not obscure.”

“Yeah, I know that.” JJ gestures towards the trumpet. “Just... don’t you only listen to... Da Vinci, or whatever the fuck?”

“Da Vinci’s a painter,” Pope says. “And I’m not actually very good at this thing just yet.”

“Must be a shitty band, then.”

“Mostly it’s just me.” Pope pauses, and then pulls at one of the straps of his trumpet case. “You’re friends with John Routledge, aren’t you?”

JJ can’t help the way he puffs up his chest a little. “Yeah. What about it?”

“He plays the guitar in the school band.” Oh yeah. That. John B had wanted to do it together, but JJ would rather die than willingly participate in a school-run activity. Besides, they have to play movie scores and songs from musicals in the school band, and JJ wouldn’t be caught dead. “He offered for me to jam with him sometime.”

JJ is a little insulted: first, at the notion that John B would invite someone into their sacred circle without consulting him beforehand, and second, that a trumpet would have any place in the sort of music they play. “You... and your trumpet?”

“It’s a trombone,” Pope says.

Ah.

“And not that,” he continues. “I, uh. Play percussion too.”

“What the fuck?” JJ says. “Can you also fly?”

Pope smiles a little shyly at him. “You’re not mad?”

“Are you good?”

“Yeah,” and it comes out a little breathless, like he’s never admitted that to anyone. “I am.”

JJ surveys him, arms folded. “Well, I’ll need to hear you play before we can decide anything,” he says, “obviously,” and Pope grins at him, relieved. “And if you’re shit you can’t join us. So you know.”

“Cool,” Pope says, a little excitedly. “I’ll knock your socks off, don’t worry.”

 _Knock your socks off_. What a goober.

Turns out, Pope’s not just good – he’s fucking great. JJ has no idea how a music nerd who plays the trombone, or whatever the fuck it’s called, can also go hard on the drums to his mom’s old Good Charlotte CDs, but he _can_. John B’s jaw hits the ground when they first hear him after school one day, their school bags pressed against the crack of the door so no one can hear, and JJ can’t even try maintain his façade of cool aloofness anymore.

He’s fucking _sick_ , is what he is: and there, in the grubby music room at the very back of the only middle school left in The Cut that hasn’t been shut down due to asbestos, _The Pogues_ is born.

Sarah comes much, much later, in high school, when the three of them have been together for years. Somehow, in between juggling schoolwork and music, the latter of which has proven pretty detrimental to the former, John B also finds time to fall in love with the daughter of one of the richest Kooks on the whole goddamn island.

Pope seems caught between finding it cute and nauseating. JJ’s mostly impressed John B managed to find the time.

For the first few months, music isn’t even mentioned. John B and Sarah spend most their time caught up in their exhausting Romeo-and-Juliet charade, only seeing each other at night or whenever Ward Cameron is away on his yacht eating shrimp and counting his money, or whatever the fuck rich people do in their free time. The first time Sarah sneaks into the Chateau during the night Pope very nearly shits himself, thinking he’s just seen a ghost, and JJ laughs for days.

Still, their forbidden love drama doesn’t leave time for much except sneaking around. JJ never sees her around, to the point where he isn’t even wholly sure what she looks like without her heart-shaped glasses, which obscure half her face on the days Topper Thornton does a victory lap of the Outer Banks in his expensive boat with the whole posse sunbathing on the deck.

And the first time music gets mentioned, it’s not even on purpose.

Sarah invites John B to the annual Kook Academy concert, and so John B invites JJ and Pope. They both gripe a little about going: Pope, ever the pragmatist, was worried that they’d get caught and assaulted by the Kook boys that JJ likes to mess around with, and JJ just didn’t want to have to sit through an hour of Grade 8 clarinet pieces. Still, John B whined something about true love and promised he wouldn’t have asked if it didn’t mean a lot to him, and so begrudgingly, they had donned their most expensive-looking clothing, pulled hats low over their faces, and trailed along.

For the most part, the concert is exactly what JJ was expecting. He loses track of the amount of fucking piano concertos these bastards pull out (and they’re long, too), and everything in between is just a snore: the only highlights are when some kid sits down and pulls out an instrument so huge for a moment JJ thinks it’s playing him instead of the other way around, and a girl with unbrushed hair and wild eyes who plays an angry song about plastic straws on a ukulele.

In fact, JJ’s practically asleep against Pope’s shoulder by the halfway mark. He’d have probably napped the entire thing away if John B hadn’t then suddenly shoved his elbow into JJ’s spleen and woken him the fuck up. “Look!” he whispers excitedly. “It’s Sarah’s turn!”

JJ wheezes a little, clutching at his ribs, but he dutifully looks over in the direction of the covert finger John B is pointing towards stage. On it, a girl is walking across the stage towards the piano in her Kook uniform with an armful of sheet music.

 _Oh no_ , JJ thinks. He doesn’t care if this is the love of John B’s life – if she’s about to play another fucking Mozart piece he’s going to lose his mind.

But then she rests her fingers on the keys and starts.

And Sarah... Sarah’s really good.

For the first time all evening, it doesn’t sound dull or monotonous in the way the past forty minutes of piano he’s sat through have. She sings a little on top of it, not a lot, but enough that JJ takes notice; sits up a little straighter. Next to him, he can see Pope do the same, eyebrows raised in disbelief. (John B is probably fantasising about her singing like that over the crib of their first child.)

How long has John B been fucking hiding _this_?

They end up leaving after Sarah’s performance. John B gives her a standing ovation and puts himself in Topper Thornton’s direct line of vision like an idiot, so the three of them have to haul ass and make a break for it as fast as they can to avoid getting driven over in his Porsche. Still, even as John B trips over an uneven sidewalk slab and falls ass-over-tit into the road and Pope nearly gets hit by a cyclist trying to rescue him, JJ can’t shake the sound of Sarah’s voice from his head.

It’s enough that when, a few weeks later, John B tentatively breaches the topic of Sarah potentially sitting in on their next band practice, JJ agrees.

“Huh?” Pope goes bug-eyed. “All this fuss over me and you just let her float in?”

“Well, I know she’s not shit, don’t I?” JJ says. “You played the trumpet, how the fuck was I supposed to know you could play the drums?”

“Firstly, it was a trombone, and secondly—”

It’s not until Sarah is sat down across from them and has declined the beer Pope awkwardly offers that JJ realises he’s never seen her up close. After the many stories John B spun of her epic beauty it’s a little disconcerting to find that she’s just a girl, as tangible as the rest of them. Her eyeliner has smudged a little from the heat and she’s wearing her sunglasses, propped up on top of her head, dark eyes weirdly scrutinising. JJ drains his beer in one go.

They play one song through for her – The Kinks, ironically, like the universe’s most unsubtle metaphor – that John B messes up a few times because he spends most of it looking at her like he’s checking that she’s having a good time. Sweet, were it not also kind of infuriating. Sarah smiles and applauds at the end, and then, when John B awkwardly presents to her the makeshift piano they’d managed to set up, consisting of a keyboard Big John had dug up from storage propped on top of two potato crates, her smile becomes wider and so unbearably fond that JJ has to look away.

Ick.

“It’s not much,” John B says, as they watch her circle it, trailing her fingers over the plastic keys. “I know that it’s probably kind of shit compared to your piano at him.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Pope says. “JJ, show her DJ mode.”

JJ demonstrates. Sarah presses down a key. The keyboard makes a coughing sound.

“Clearly,” Sarah says.

Pope frowns. “That used to work.”

“You can jam with us if you want,” John B offers earnestly. “We just kind of play songs and improvise.”

So they do, splitting into a Hey Monday song that Pope made them listen to for a week straight. It’s a song they’ve done before, both John B and JJ fucking around with different chords and giggling as their riffs become more and more ridiculous whilst Pope frantically tries to keep up on the drums, so JJ’s attention is mostly on Sarah, who sits down behind the keyboard and splays her fingers out across the keys, considering. Her face softens a little in surprise when John B starts singing, and for a second JJ worries that she’s also going to lose focus and fall into gaga land (as John B is prone to do whenever Sarah is even mentioned), but then she smiles a little to herself and begins to play along, humming on top.

Across the room, JJ meets Pope’s eyes and grins. John B looks fucking jubilant.

Yeah. This is something special.

*

The sun is still snaking up across the ocean when JJ slips out of the bus.

He’d been awake for about an hour, still jittery with the adrenaline from the night before. It’s always been like this the day after a particularly good performance, like his bones are still up on the stage in front of a sea of screaming people. He’d tried to go back to sleep, but between that and John B’s snoring it had been impossible, and so, as the first rays of daylight crept up over the horizon, he decided to fuck it and get out.

In moments like this, the only thing he can do to shake off the residue freneticism is sprint it out.

He clambers out of his bunk, narrowly avoiding stepping on Pope’s hand and then tripping over what feels like Sarah’s hairbrush, pulls on the cleanest smelling T-shirt from his suitcase strewn on the floor, and is off in a manner of minutes. He likes it when it’s this early: no one’s woken up yet, aside from the fishermen at the docks who scowl at him as he jogs past (apparently, still pissed about that one time he and the boys stole one of their boats). In the crisp autumn, the sky is a pale tangerine, and so clear he imagines he can look up through the atmosphere and into space.

It’s how he explores, going on runs like this. Growing up, he and his dad never had enough money to go anywhere nicer than the beach (and when you live a stone’s throw away, it’s not saying much) so going on tour with the band is like his own version of a vacation. Their last tour was the first time he had even left North Carolina, and even then, it was just a slow circle through the neighbouring states, which were similar enough that it felt like they’d never left.

But today – today marks the start of their first nation-wide tour. For the first time, he’ll see more than just the ocean and the lazy sprawl of beachside restaurants, see _cities_ , dip his toes in the water on the other side of the USA. He wonders if it’ll be much different. It’s that thought that makes him run just a little faster this morning. This is the last time he’ll be seeing his hometown for a while.

He’s out for so long that by the time the shape of the venue makes its way back into his vision, the sun has risen fully and the sky is a deep crystal blue, the sun draping the tour bus parked on the side in short, dark shadows. JJ gives it a friendly punch on a tail-light as he passes it.

Sarah, John B and Pope are already in the green room when he arrives, croissants on paper plates balanced on their laps. Or, rather, Pope has a croissant on a paper plate balanced on his lap. John B’s is already gone and Sarah’s is in John B’s hand as he feeds it to her.

“Jesus fuck,” JJ says, in lieu of a hello, “this early?”

“JJ the friendly ghost reappears,” Pope says. JJ wonders who ever told him he was funny. “Good of you to apparate back from wherever it is you disappear to.”

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” JJ says. “Where’s my croissant?”

Wheezie, who is perched on the end of one of the couches, her feet several inches above the ground, passes it to him. “John B’s reading the review of the show last night.”

“What’s the general consensus?”

“You weren’t shit.”

From Wheezie, that’s glowing praise. “Stop it, you’ll make me blush.”

“Here, listen to this, JJ,” John B says. “ _The environment was like nothing I’d experienced before. While not a big venue by any means, lead singer John Routledge_ – that’s me! – _conducted the music in a way that made everyone from the front of the room to the back feel seen_.”

“Read him the paragraph about the elusive, talented drummer,” Pope says.

John B frowns at his phone, bringing it so close to his face he almost goes cross-eyed. “I don’t understand why they never put a picture of me as the headlining picture anymore.”

JJ snorts into his croissant. While he knows that it’s mainly due to John B’s personality that he swans towards the journalists after a show, he knows that it’s also a little in part down to the fact that he wants to get in their good books enough to convince them to have a photo of him next to the article. He used to get in it a lot, something about being a frontman and also having long hair that makes for excellent hair-toss pictures, but then he started wearing headbands and Sarah became the go-to. (It’s fucking hysterical how much it offended him.)

JJ can’t be bothered with press like that: he appreciates it, knows that especially as a smaller band, most of the people willing to arrive at their shows are there out of love for the music as opposed to parasitic larger publications capitalising on their story, but it requires a good face and even better attitude to be able to be the one giving out the quotes, and he doesn’t have it in him. Also apparently his interviewer’s face is shit, like the last time he tried and started wiping his armpits in front of them. John B gave him a stern talking-to about decorum after that.

Safe to say, he wasn’t the focus of the photograph for _that_ piece.

Pope waves a croissant at him like a flag. “You? What about me? I’m up there giving it my all every night and for what! Where are my pictures?”

“It’s because you’re tucked away at the back,” Sarah says.

“You can’t even talk.”

She preens. “Not my fault I’m photogenic.”

“Do you really think it’s the headband?” John B says, sounding genuinely concerned. Self-consciously, he touches the one he’s wearing now, more a bandanna than anything, like he’s trying to shield it from their prying eyes.

Personally, JJ absolutely thinks it’s because of the headband, but he knows how pleased John B is whenever he wears it, so he reaches over and pats his shoulder. “‘Course not, bro.”

“It’s just the general appearance,” Pope says, and John B kicks at him.

“You’re just lucky I’m not up there,” Wheezie says, “or I’d wipe the floor with you.” Today she has on two different coloured Converse that lace all the way up the knees and legwarmers on her arms. “If you’d just let me make some wardrobe alterations—”

“ _No_ ,” Sarah says immediately, and JJ has to agree. He can only imagine what wardrobe alterations Wheezie would make were she given that much power, and they all involve excessive amounts of googly eyes and sparkles.

Wheezie just raises an eyebrow. “One day you’ll see.”

“Whatever you say,” JJ says, and throws the last of his croissant into the air, successfully catching it in his mouth. John B looks terribly impressed. “What’s on the agenda today, then, Manager Sneezy? When’s Pick-On-Pope o’clock?”

“You just missed it,” Pope says, “seven am to seven thirty.”

“It’s not as funny when you play along.”

“Dude, I just read an article where they called me alluring three times. I am _untouchable_.”

“Fuck off, no they didn’t.”

“They did,” Sarah says. “You were _sulky and quiet_.”

JJ flips her off, and she laughs, reaching over to tuck her fingers through the string tied around his wrist, against his pulse point. Her fingers are cold and a little greasy from the croissants, and he can feel their pulses going on off-beats, slowed and at ease.

Wheezie produces her planner from her bag, bright green and covered in fur, and flips through it until she finds today’s date. “You haven’t got much planned aside from the show tonight. It’ll have to be a late night because we need to pack down so we can get on the road if we want to hit Richmond by morning.”

JJ nods a little as he rips at his napkin. While they’re not in any way playing stadiums, or even arenas, the fact that the little underground bar they’d rented for their show in North Carolina had managed to sell out for not one but two nights in a row still makes him immeasurably happy. Just knowing that they’ve managed to make enough waves in their hometown that people would pay to cram in a venue that smells a little of piss and a lot of stale sweat to see them perform is more than he could ever have dreamed.

“Oh,” Wheezie continues, as she clicks her pen, “and you’re also meeting Ciara today.”

JJ frowns. Sarah raises an eyebrow. “Do you mean Kiara?”

“Are you implying I can’t read?” Wheezie snips at her, and then peers closer at her planner. “Oh, you’re right, I do mean Kiara.”

Through a mouthful of croissant, Pope says, “Who’s Kiara?”

“Who indeed,” Wheezie says, because apparently straight answers to questions are for losers. “Sarah, I trust you’re taking care of that?”

Sarah salutes her. “Right on.”

“Make sure you’ve cleared out a bunk for her.” She casts a look to Pope and JJ. “That means your weed operation will be moved.”

“Surely you don’t mean the Potting Shed,” Pope says, with an appropriate amount of offence. JJ feels similarly. He and Pope have spent a long time carefully curating the spare bunk to create an optimum smoking hidey-hole when the bus is moving and Sarah complains about the smell. They took an entire afternoon scrubbing at the grout around the circular window just above it to get it open wide enough that they could blow the smoke straight out. John B made them a sign and everything: it says _Potting Shed_ and is covered in glitter glue and the feathers Wheezie leaves in her wake. (JJ is still partially convinced she shares half her DNA with a craft store.)

“Oh, but I do,” Wheezie says, with all the sympathy of a stick of celery. “Smoke in the back room like the rest of us.”

JJ and Pope exchange a mournful look.

“What time is she arriving?” Sarah asks Wheezie.

“A few hours; I told her half past five. She’ll arrive just as you start tech rehearsal, so you can meet her then.”

“Is she a yeti?” Pope says. “What’s with all this mystery?”

Wheezie rolls her eyes. “She’s a journalist. Can I leave now or must I field any more useless questions?”

“Always good to see you, Sneezy,” JJ says.

She doesn’t even dignify him with a response, just leaves with a swoosh of fringe from her backpack. Pope sort of blinks at her retreating back, which JJ can’t blame him for, because Wheezie on a mission is akin to a very loud flash bomb going off a hair away from your nose. John B is the only one who seems to be immune, because he claps his hands together. “Who's up for a game of Clue to pass the time?”

*

JJ’s always enjoyed tech rehearsal.

Mostly, it’s an excuse for them to jam somewhere that isn’t cramped in the back room of the tour bus where Pope taps the couches in lieu of a drumkit. It’s that time of day where the sky is just beginning to ripen and everything trails long, dark shadows. Up onstage, back-lit by the lights they have rigged up, the four of them are like giants lengthening across the floor.

It’s been a lazy day in terms of productivity: all JJ’s done so far is help set-up for the show, rigging lights and testing speakers, and then split a blunt with John B in the Potting Shed’s final moments. He has no idea why Wheezie wants them to move it, but he’s long since stopped questioning Wheezie’s motives with things anymore. Most days she is fuelled by nothing but spite and an innate need to be as big an inconvenience as possible. She very well could just be screwing them around.

Still, they’re nothing if not diligent, and so they had reluctantly taken down the sign and changed the sheets.

Wheezie herself is currently at the back of the room sat on a road case, sucking at a lollipop and scrolling through her phone. She seems distracted, constantly looking up from it and peering around the room like she’s trying to find someone. JJ would not be surprised if it was them: he’s partially convinced she’s somehow managed to train her brain to filter out their music, because the amount of times she has been so engrossed on her phone she forgets they’re right in front of her is frankly obscene.

Then, halfway through the fourth song, the back door opens, and JJ looks up from his bass to see a figure slip through, carrying a suitcase. For a second he thinks it’s a stray crew member arriving with one of their amps, until instead of heading towards the stage the figure tentatively moves towards Wheezie on the road case.

Shrouded in shadows from the lip of the overhead windows and the waning light coming through them, JJ can’t make out much, just a slender figure, long legs and dark curly hair. There is something inexplicably familiar about the figure – or _her_ , he should say – the strangest nagging feeling in the back of mind that tells him he’s seen her before, but he can’t think where. She isn’t wearing a black polo like the rest of the staff so she clearly doesn’t work here, but the way Wheezie looks up and waves hello, offering her hand to shake, JJ knows she can’t just be a fan who’s snuck in either.

He’s so distracted his fingers slip on his fretboard and his next note comes out flat. Quickly, he looks away. She’s probably just a stagehand who got lost.

He turns back to John B, who is softly humming the words into his microphone to preserve his voice for later tonight. His focus seems elsewhere, too, though decidedly not on unnerving stagehands: he’s staring down intently at his fretboard, chewing at his lower lip, a strand of hair escaping from his headband and dangling in front of his eyes. As Sarah plays the chord progression to the chorus, John B improvises a riff, and then looks up, so fucking pleased with himself, that JJ has to smile too.

“Dude, fuck, did you hear that?” John B says. “Pope, go back to the pre-chorus, I need to do that again. JJ, come, do it with me.”

“Descending, yeah?”

“Yeah. Come on.” He does it again, face splitting into a grin when he gets it, and then again, slower, so JJ can follow along on the bass. “Is that not fucking sick?”

“Dude.” That’s Pope, standing up from the drums, holding his cymbals in place. “Fuuuck, John B. That’s rad.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Let’s do that again.”

“Are we going back to the prechorus?” Sarah says.

“No, not the whole thing, just—the last line, yeah?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Two, three, four—”

Before they can launch back in, there’s the sound of laughter, and when JJ looks up he sees Wheezie and the girl walking across the floor towards them and up the steps on the side of the stage. His fingers slow on his bass, and John B’s do too: he follows his gaze and stops playing, lifting his guitar from where it’s slung around his neck. “Wheezie, hey! I didn’t know you were here.”

“I’m always here,” Wheezie says. “Omnipresence in my middle name. Like God.”

“That’s not God’s middle name,” Sarah says. “Nice shoes.”

JJ looks down at her feet as they grow nearer. Somehow, she has gotten hold of two more Converse which are also odd-coloured, but different to the ones she was wearing before. That is four pairs of knee-high Converse she owns now. Frankly four pairs too many.

“Thank you,” Wheezie says. “You all look homeless today.”

“Darn,” Pope says, “I was aiming for artfully nomadic,” and JJ snorts.

Wheezie narrows her eyes at them, unimpressed. “You’re lucky that Kiara also dresses like a vagrant or we’d be in trouble.”

The girl blinks at her, and looks down at her outfit. Then she glances at the suitcase, which doubtless is filled with more of the same. JJ bites his lip to not smile at her put-out look.

Oblivious, Wheezie gestures towards the girl. “Speaking of – everyone, this is Kiara. She’s the—wait, it _was_ Kiara, wasn’t it? Good. She’s going to be with us for the next while so be nice, because the fate of your careers is in her hands.”

“Please don’t ever go into motivational speaking,” Pope says.

“I’ve been planning my TED Talk since I was five, Pope.”

“Hey, Kie,” Sarah says amusedly, and when JJ turns to look at her she is grinning at her with a familiarity like they’re old friends. Again: who the fuck _is_ this girl? “Good to see you made it.”

“Oh, you know,” Kiara says, “perilous journey, and all that.”

“I’m sure.” Sarah’s eyes drift to Wheezie who is busy consulting her phone and pulls a face. Kie smirks to cover a laugh.

John B moves forward, offering a hand. “Nice to meet you, Kie! I’m John B. Happy to have you with us.”

Kie turns to him, gaze assessing. “Front man John B,” she says, but not in the way JJ has gotten used to from other journalists, like they’re reciting information to prove they know what they’re talking about. She says it like she’s pleased to see him, bestowing _front man_ with every ounce of irony it’s worth. Here, in Crocs and a tank top that belongs to Pope, John B is so far from the persona of the person onstage that it’s almost laughable. “It’s good to meet you.”

John B’s smile comes a little less like the shiny one he gives to the crowd; more genuine. “You, too.”

JJ meets Pope’s eyes across the stage and pulls a confused face. Pope shrugs in response.

“This is Pope and JJ,” John B continues, gesturing towards them. Pope salutes her and JJ simply nods, taking her in, unsure of her place. He feels an itch like he hasn’t in a while, the one that first reared its ugly head when Pope told him all those years ago in the music room that John B had offered for him to joining without talking to JJ first. “And you... already know Sarah?”

“We went to school together,” Sarah says. “Do you guys remember me mentioning Turtle Girl?”

“Oh, fuck _you_ ,” Kiara says, voice bubbling with laughter. “You fucking _didn’t_ —”

“No way,” Pope says, and now he’s beginning to enjoy himself, warming to this newcomer too, and JJ feels himself prickle a little with irritation. “You’re Turtle Girl?”

“You’re so dead,” Kiara says to Sarah. “I can’t believe—”

“Turtle Girl!” John B actually bounces a little in excitement. “No way, Sarah mentioned you so many times! You’re the one who protested against plastic straws in the cafeteria, right?”

Kiara’s ears are pink, and yeah, okay, JJ is still bristling a little, but he’s not blind to the fact that she’s also sort of really cute. “I hate you,” she says. “I can never live this down.”

“Sorry, babe,” Sarah says, not sounding very sorry at all. “You were a defining feature of high school.”

“I cannot wait to hear the tales of teenage Sarah that aren’t terribly biased,” Pope says, and John B blushes a little. “Cameron, you’re toast.”

Sarah scoffs. “Please, I was a shining star in high school. You have nothing.”

Kiara raises an eyebrow. “Did you forget me sorting the trash into plastic, glass and paper meant I saw pretty much every single love note Topper Thornton wrote you?”

Sarah flames to her hair. John B, for whom Topper Thornton is still hilariously a sore subject, looks like he’s just swallowed a lemon. “He wrote you love notes?” he says.

“They meant nothing to me,” Sarah promises him.

Wheezie looks delighted at this turn of events. “I knew my gut feeling was right about you,” she says to Kiara. “I have a feeling you’re going to be a riot to have around.”

Kiara goes a little pink again. Sarah momentarily breaks eye-contact with John B to roll her eyes and say, “What gut feeling? _I_ was your gut feeling. I’m the one who told you to accept her offer. Which, by the way, you didn’t even accept – I did.”

Wheezie looks offended by this prospect. “Preposterous.”

“Uh, who was the one letting her know that she’d even booked the job?”

“Kind of true,” Kiara says, and Wheezie suddenly looks like she wants to swallow every nice word she said about her. “Sarah was the one who told me. I mean, I wasn’t even sure you wanted me for one show let alone a whole month’s worth.”

And suddenly JJ’s whole world comes grinding to a halt.

“Wait, what?” he says. “A whole month’s worth of what?”

He doesn’t think he does a very good job at hiding the incredulity in his voice, and Kiara’s expression falters a little. “Of shows,” she says. Her eyes flicker between him and Sarah. “Did... you not know that?”

He cuts his gaze at Wheezie, who has all of a sudden taken great interest in her mismatched shoes. “No,” he says coldly. “We didn’t. Wheezie, can I speak to you outside, please?”

“JJ—” John B tries.

“ _Wheezie_?”

His voice brooks no argument. Meekly, Wheezie says, “Lead the way.”

He takes his bass off, shoving it at Pope, and then stalks off the stage, seeing Wheezie in his peripheral scurry after him. As he moves, his mind whirs, so conflicted he can almost feel the beginning of a headache split his skull. Deep down, he knows he’s overreacting, and just made a dick of himself in front of the person who has the power to ruin them – but he can’t help it. This tour – this was meant to be something just for the four of them. They carved their way through sweat, blood, tears and Wheezie’s mild sociopathy, pouring their hearts into the songs that made them enough money to even get to tour in the first place. This is all he could have ever dreamed since he first picked up the guitar.

But now, it’s not just the four of them and the pulling force between them that bonds them tighter than anything he’s ever felt. There’s an intruder now, a foreign body in their ecosystem: and not only that, but one with crow-like eyes, writing down every little move they make. And JJ gets it. Out of the group of them, he knows he’s the least personable. He’s the band’s wild, surly shadow, _sulky and quiet_ – an acquired taste, his teachers used to say.

This bond he has with John B, Sarah, Pope – it’s something that no one can even come close to. But now there’s someone else in the fray with him, someone who is getting paid to unravel every ugly ball, pick at them until they bleed, and log them into her laptop.

It’s not irrational; it’s self-preservation.

JJ leads them into the hall outside the venue, far away enough that he knows the others can’t hear them. He leans against the wall, Wheezie awkwardly tugging at the laces of her shoes.

“Mind explaining what the fuck is going on?” he says coldly.

Wheezie actually looks a little sheepish. “I... may have forgotten the finer details.”

“ _Wheezie_.”

Her façade breaks, and she throws up her hands. “Look, JJ, I’m sorry, okay? I’ve been so busy organising this whole tour and arranging venues and accommodation that it just completely slipped my mind to tell you.”

“A big fucking thing to just _slip your mind_ , Wheezie. Why didn’t you _ask_ us?”

“Sarah vouched for her.”

“That’s Sarah. Not all of us.”

“Can you stop acting like a child, JJ? I made a mistake. I’m sorry. What do you want me to do about it, go out and tell that poor girl that she’s out of a job because the bassist is a brat who threw a fit when he didn’t get what he wanted?”

“This isn’t me throwing a fucking _fit_ , Wheezie. This is our first tour, ever. This is a huge deal to us! And you just invited some stranger along for the ride for what, _press_?”

“Yes!” Wheezie snaps, and JJ takes a step back at the frustration in her voice. “You need this, JJ! The _band_ needs this! You haven’t done a single interview since you started. Do you want to be some irrelevant fleeting thing that no one’s ever heard of or do you want to be a _band_? Because right now you’re not acting like you do. Do you know how many readers The Kildare News gets?”

“I get that – but why did you have to invite her on _tour_? This tour was meant to be something we’ll remember for the rest of our lives, something just ours, and now you’ve got some fucking _intruder_ coming in and—”

“Wheezie?”

They both turn.

Kiara stands a few feet away, looking a little uncertain. JJ’s heart falls to his boots.

 _Fuck_.

“Kiara,” Wheezie says. “What can I do for you?”

Kiara’s eyes flick between the two of them. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“You weren’t,” Wheezie says. “What’s up?”

Something like guilt roils in JJ’s gut.

“Uh, I was just wondering where I should put my suitcase,” Kiara says. “I asked one of the crew but they said I should talk to you about it, so...”

“Yes, of course,” Wheezie says. She straightens and smooths down her hair, adjusting her glasses. “You can leave it in your bunk – you’ll get a chance to unpack too. JJ will help, won’t you, JJ?”

Kiara’s wide dark eyes pin him to the ground. _Now you’ve got some fucking intruder coming in._ Roughly, he says, “Sure,” and steps out of the door before those eyes can make him feel any worse. “Come on.”

They walk in silence out of the back door of the venue to the tour bus parked a few feet away. There is no noise except the wheels of Kiara’s suitcase against the gravel of the carpark and JJ’s heartbeat in his ears.

_You fucking idiot. You’ve messed it up, just like you mess up everything._

There is an awkward, fraught moment as they pause outside the door of the bus and JJ tries to open it. It’s an old, wheezing thing, this bus, the cheapest hire from the cheapest omnibus company, and the door sticks at the choicest of moments: like now, for example, where the five seconds JJ spends trying to prise it open feel like it lasts five years as Kiara stands silently next to him. Luckily, after only a few moments struggle, the door heaves open, and JJ steps in, wordlessly gesturing Kiara to do the same, and then belatedly realising she might need some help with her suitcase. He turns to offer extra arm power but she’s already dragged it in, so instead he pivots away and makes his way quickly between the bunks, feeling every step like a death knell. _You fucking dumbass_.

“Uh, this is yours,” he mutters, as he pulls aside the curtain to the Potting Shed. Fuck, he’s such an idiot – he should have _known_. “We cleaned it out this morning but there might be—”

Kiara produces a burnt joint butt.

“Things,” he finishes, a little lamely.

What looks like it could be a genuine smile flickers across her face, only for a second. She silently passes it to him and pulls herself up in it, sitting so her legs dangle down to the bunk below.

“It’s nice,” she says. She traces her finger around the circular window, bolted back shut.

JJ pulls himself up on the bunk opposite, his bunk. Their dangling legs are but a foot apart across from each other, and to avoid meeting her gaze he looks down at them instead. In her shorts, a lot of her long dark legs are on show, ending in a pair of canvas sneakers that have certainly seen better days. There’s a small bruise just above her ankle; greening. It’s an old one. He wonders where she got it from.

“I know this isn’t ideal,” she says quietly, and when he glances up she’s looking straight at him, picking at one of the many bracelets around her wrist. “I get it.”

“I’m sorry,” JJ says.

Her smile is wry. “Sorry I heard or sorry you said it?”

Fuck. “Both. I guess.”

There’s a long pause.

“You’re not the first person who’s said something like that, you know,” she says.

“That doesn’t really make me feel any better.”

“What I mean to say is, I get it. I know it sucks, having someone intrude on something that’s just meant to be yours. Especially someone you feel like you can’t really be yourself around, because they’re recording everything you’re doing.”

JJ doesn’t say anything. Mostly because she’s got it pretty fucking spot on.

“Let’s make a deal,” she says.

He raises an eyebrow. “A deal?”

“You say the word, and it’s off the record.” JJ’s expression must betray his surprise because she smiles a little ruefully. “I’m here a month, JJ. I don’t want this to be hard for you, _or_ —or for me.”

Pope’s face from all those years ago appears in his head. _You’re friends with John Routledge, aren’t you?_ For the first time, JJ realises that this probably sucks a little for her, too.

“I’m—really sorry,” he says.

Kiara shrugs. “I get it.”

“I know, but—still. This probably isn’t easy for you either.”

Her smile is wry. “I’m not the kind of Kook Sarah was. I’m not very good at making friends like she is.”

And doesn’t JJ get that.

“It wasn’t personal.”

“I know.”

Fuck.

He doesn’t know what to say to make it better. “You can trash my name in the article,” he mumbles, tugging at a loose thread on his sheet. “If you’d want. I’d probably deserve it.”

She exhales a small laugh. “JJ Maybank, secret asshole.”

His eyes flick up. “You know my full name.”

“I did my research.” She wraps a loose string of her bracelet around her finger, and then looks up at him. “I liked the song you sang. On the EP.”

She bought the EP, too. Listened enough that she knew who was singing what. Jesus fuck, he’s a terrible person. “Now you’re making me feel worse.”

“It’s working?”

“Fuck. Yeah.”

She huffs a laugh again, her shoulders dropping with it. “I’d say sorry, but...”

“Yeah. I know.” He crushes the butt of the joint between his fingers, and they both watch the ash fall down towards the ground. “Shit. You’re environmental, aren’t you?”

Her eyes are amused. “It’s inside. You’re okay.”

“Okay.” He expels a breath.

“Hey,” she says. “Start over?”

He gives her a look. “You’d want that?”

“Only a bad person if it’s a repeated pattern of behaviour.”

A laugh escapes him against his will. “Okay. Start over.”

Kiara smiles a little, and straightens, holding out her hand. “Hi. My name is Kiara Carerra, I’m a journalist for The Kildare News, and I’m joining you on the road for the next month so I can write an article about you.”

JJ feels his lips tug up of their own accord. He takes her proffered hand; it is smooth and warm against his own. “Hey,” he says. “I’m JJ. I play bass and—and sometimes I act like a dick, because I’m scared of messing up a really good thing I’ve got going on.” Kiara’s expression softens. “And that’s not really an excuse, but—I guess it’s an explanation.”

“Hi, JJ,” she says softly. “Nice to meet you.”

“You too.”

They shake; and JJ breathes for what feels like the first time all day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> big big thank u to [annie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RaeOfFrickingSunshine/pseuds/RaeOfFrickingSunshine) for being nice about drafts 1-3 of this chapter, actively stopping me from writing draft 4 and then beta-ing draft 5 when i didn’t listen. u r a legend!
> 
> [tumblr](https://smileymikey.tumblr.com/)


	3. Chapter 3

Kiara awakens to the sound of shouting.

Her first instinct is to panic: has the bus crashed? Did someone die? Would it cross the line between good journalism and poor morality to record the whole affair on her phone for the sake of the story? Then she tugs open the curtain divider of her bunk and squints her sore eyes in the thin morning light, and, rather than seeing the band being murdered in cold blood, instead narrowly avoids getting hit in the face when a blurry form rolls out of JJ’s bunk, arms flailing, and hits the ground.

“What the...?” she manages, blearily.

She rubs at one of her eyes and leans out further, glancing down the hall of bunks to the front of the bus, where John B and Pope are sprawled pulling on sneakers and jackets. The blurry form, which reveals itself as JJ when it picks itself off the ground with a muffled, “Jesus _fuck_ ”, hops up to them, pulling on a pair of jeans as he moves. (And yeah. It may be bumfuck-o’clock, but Kiara knows a good ass when she sees one.)

“What the hell is going on?” she says.

John B glances up from where he’s pulling on a hoodie and beams. “Morning, Kiara!” he says. “Sleep well?”

“Er.” Kiara, for the first time, realises what she must look like, and self-consciously runs a hand through her tangled hair. “Yeah?”

“You’ll get used to sleeping in a bus,” Pope says, like that’s the problem at the hand right now. “It just takes a bit of adjustment.”

“Guys, it’s barely seven am,” says a voice from below her, and when Kiara glances down, she sees Sarah’s head poking out from her own curtain, silk eye mask on top of her head. Unsurprisingly, it is heart-shaped too. “With all the love in the world, shut the fuck up.”

“No can do, Cameron,” JJ says, as his head emerges from the sweater he was pulling on. His golden hair is smushed to one side, voice still gravelly with sleep, and in the early amber light of morning he looks like something from a painting. “It’s a code blue.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Sarah bemoans, and tries to slink back into her bunk, but JJ comes over anyway and flings her curtain open, dragging her out by the arm. “No! Do you know what time it is?”

“Can someone tell me what’s going on?” Kiara says.

JJ glances up at her. Like this, they are almost eye-level, and Kiara becomes very conscious she is currently bra-less and in the world’s rattiest pair of sleep shorts. His blue eyes are mischievous. “You, too. Get dressed.”

“Why?”

From the front of the bus, John B turns to face her with the widest smile she’s ever seen. “ _Horses_!”

The grass is still damp with morning dew when they step out the bus. Kiara lags behind as the boys eagerly hop the fence by the road, dancing into the field whooping and shouting. The horses nearby startle, lifting their heads from where they were grazing at the three hurricanes barrelling toward them. Instead, Kiara just stands back and observes, hands folded in the pockets of her hoodie, half-awake, letting the slow crawl of the sun over the horizon wake her up.

“Sorry about all this,” says a voice, from next to her, and when Kiara glances over she sees Sarah, looking a little grumpy, but also so unbearably fond that Kiara feels a small smile of her own tug at her lips. “We take horses very seriously.”

“I can tell.” She takes a moment to admire her get-up, none of which looks like it belongs to her. “Nice outfit.”

Sarah scowls spectacularly, tugging at the strings of the sweater she’s wearing until only her eyes and nose are visible. “Shut the fuck up, Carerra. Give it two days and soon you’ll be in the mix. Clothes are a free for all around here.”

“Looking forward to it.”

“Fuck!” shouts John B delightedly, and they both look over to see him dancing away from a horse with his hand cradled under his armpit. “It bit me!”

He looks thrilled about it. JJ crows, “Way to go!”

“You should go,” Kiara says, to Sarah. “Don’t feel obliged to keep me company.”

Sarah glances at her. “What makes you think I want to be out there with them?”

Kiara shrugs. “Just a feeling.”

Sarah narrows her eyes at her, but there’s a smile playing at the end of her mouth, and she reaches up to tug down her hood. “Your psychic mojo is real creepy, by the way,” she says, but not without affection. “Enjoy the three minutes of peace, we’ll be needing you for photos.”

Kiara just smiles, and watches as Sarah bounds off after them, tripping over a molehill as she goes. It wasn’t psychic so much as it was careful observation. There’s a reason why Sarah fits in with these boys, wild and rowdy and excited, and it’s not because she hangs back when there are horses. If she was that opposed, she wouldn’t have come out of the bus at all. Kiara had learned that much when the night before, after pack-down, Pope had tried to talk her into a movie, and Sarah had simply pulled her eye mask over her face, stuffed her ears with earplugs, and shut herself in her bunk.

Kiara folds her arms tighter across her chest, fending off the faint morning chill, just watching. There’s something nice about seeing them horse around together. (She sniggers to herself about the pun; makes a note to include it in the article.) Like this, distilled from the bright lights and roaring music, play-fighting in the grass, they feel like they are at their most real, like she has unzippered the facades and caught a glimpse of who they really are when the music stops.

It had been difficult, at first, to draw a clean distinction between the onstage personas and the people behind them. Onstage, they had been like something out of a different realm, fantastical and huge and otherworldly, so much so that seeing them on that first day at tech rehearsal, she’d struggled to marry the two giants from the night before to the people in front of her, alive and rumpled in each other’s clothes, giggling as they fucked around on each other’s instruments. Now she’s spent time with them, started to understand which facets of their personalities were heightened when they were performing, it’s much easier.

Especially now, where, about fifty feet in front of her, John B is clomping around in his Crocs, posturing at the horses. Behind him, Pope yelps a little in fear when a horse gets too close to him, and Sarah, in a borrowed sweatshirt, is bent double laughing at him.

Unbidden, her eyes stray to the last member.

And, then, of course, JJ.

As if on cue, across the field there comes a whoop. She looks over to see that he has breaking out in a sprint, arms outstretched, heading straight towards Pope, who attempts to perform a Dirty Dancing lift when he’s near enough that sends them both tumbling to the ground when JJ’s momentum knocks them clean off their feet. Their laughter echoes across the field.

JJ.

She still isn’t sure where she stands with him, even after they’d made up. Last night, after everyone had settled down in their bunks – and then, after a while, Sarah in John B’s – Kiara had sat cross-legged on her own bunk, laptop in front of her, notebook open on her lap, trying to jot down her initial thoughts on everyone. She had set up a different page for every person, at the very front so she could add to them whenever another facet of their personality was revealed.

 _John (B?_ _wtf is the b for_ _) Routledge – frontman. Super friendly and welcoming. So good-natured that a lot of jokes don’t land on him. (Do I mention the fashion sense?)_

_Sarah Cameron – almost exactly how I remembered. Badass. A little bitchy. Does her eyeliner ever smudge? The older sister of the group. She and JB I think have a thing. (Questionable noises coming from his bunk right now. Not sex. I heard something about squirrels.)_

_Pope Heyward/Hayward (check the spelling) – drums. Nerdy, smart – simultaneously very chill and very highly strung. (Does he smoke?). For some reason keeps a pack of Uno cards in his pocket. Has asked for me to play twice already._

And then:

_JJ Maybank – ??_

It’s not that she has nothing to say. In fact, it’s pretty much the opposite - out of them all, she has the most to say about JJ. But at least with all the others there is lightness to them down, something insubstantial that makes them easy enough to pin down into words on a page. With JJ, everything about him feels heavily weighted, from his careful assessing gaze to the way he flinched when she stuck out her hand for him to shake -- like he thought for a second she was going to strike him.

Thing is, she knows that this isn’t true. There is obviously a lightness to him too, or he wouldn’t work the rest of the group. Kiara had glimpsed a side of it at the show that night, when he cracked a joke after John B had tripped over an amp about him taking _break a leg_ a little too seriously that had he, Sarah and Pope breaking off into giggles mid-song for the next ten minutes as John B pouted.

Still, he hadn’t let even a fracture of it show to Kiara.

They may have made up and let bygones be bygones, but she has a suspicion that he still doesn’t like her. It hurts a little more than she’d expected. It feels a little bit like high school again – new girl in school, putting her best foot forward, presenting the side of her that was most palatable to make friends. Just the knowledge that Wheezie hadn’t told the band about her makes her feel like an intruder already: she doesn’t need someone else reminding her.

But they’re both adults. They can sort it out. Besides, it’s only a month. Then she can go home, get promoted, and never have to think about him again.

“Hey, Kiara!”

She looks up to see Pope waving at her.

“Come on!” he says. “We need you to take pictures.”

She treads carefully across the grass, feeling her exposed ankles sting in the chilly air. As she approaches, the group reassembles themselves around the horse, Pope squatting down in front of it like he’s about to take a dump. “Does this look cool?” he says to JJ, craning his neck upwards.

“Not even close, dude.”

“Come next to me, I don’t want to put my head too close to its teeth.”

JJ rolls his eyes, but does so anyway.

“Shall I just use my phone?” Kiara says.

“Kie, see if you can get me in,” John B says. For some reason he’s backing away. “I’m gonna try and get on its back.”

Kiara’s eyes widen. “Uh, John B, I really don’t think—”

“JB, what the fuck?” Pope yelps, trying to stand back up, but it’s too late, because just as he’s stretching back to his full height John B has let out a cry akin to that of a man going to war and suddenly taken off in a sprint towards the horse’s flank. Sarah scrambles away and JJ manages to roll out of range of the hooves just as John B jumps and lands awkwardly on the back. Understandably, the horse rears in surprise, bucking so violently that John B’s maybe only been on the back for a handful of seconds before he is violently flung off and lands face-first in the grass nearby, before it darts off in the opposite direction with an indignant whinny.

Kiara presses a hand to her heart, feeling it pound. A few feet away, she becomes aware of JJ laughing so hard he’s bent double, and Pope still curled in a ball on the ground, unharmed, yelling like he’s the one who’s just fallen.

“Oh my fucking God!” he’s shouting, shielding his face. “What the fuck! Is it gone? Who died? Am I okay?”

Kiara takes a step towards John B’s prone form, fearing that he’s just gone and actually killed himself, but then he pushes himself up on his elbows, face smeared in mud, grinning like a madman. “Did you fucking _see_ that?”

JJ nearly falls over he’s laughing so hard.

“Kiara!” John B scrambles to his feet. “Tell me you got that on film! You were recording, right?”

Kiara was not in fact recording, but in her fright she did hold down the capture button for a solid twenty seconds, meaning she has the entire thing told in a series of photos. John B whoops in excitement when she presents this, and she barely has time to flinch before he’s grabbing her phone with muddy hands and swiping through.

“Fuck,” he says giddily, “look how fucking cool this is! Pope!”

Pope moans unintelligibly from where he’s still curled in a ball.

“I think you broke him,” Kiara says.

John B waves the phone at her, practically thrusting it in her face. “You need to use this picture as the headlining photo, the one of me mid-air.”

“Before or after it threw you off?”

“Either!” He turns to Sarah, stood a little way away, looking shell-shocked. “Sarah, look at these!”

“You could have fucking _died_!” she says. “Jesus fuck, John B, give some warning!”

“I did!”

“A warning not five seconds before you jump onto a wild horse’s back.”

“Okay, it was barely wild.”

“Wild enough! What were you thinking?”

Kiara spots movement out of the corner of her eye, and she turns to see Pope clambering to his feet. “No more,” he declares. “No more fucking horses. No siree. Not today.”

“Did Grandpa Pope get a fright?” JJ teases.

Pope marches away. “Fuck this. We’re abolishing the code blue. No more until you can learn to behave like civil people.”

“Oh, Pope,” John B says, and jogs up to him, slinging an arm around his shoulder. “You should do it with me next time! I think I just underestimated how big the horse was. I just need to run faster…”

Their voices trail off as they head back to the bus. Kiara watches them go, still dazed from whatever the fuck just happened; so much so that when she feels a hand on her shoulder she startles until she sees Sarah appear next to her.

“Jesus,” she breathes. “Sorry.”

“To preface,” Sarah says, “that doesn’t normally happen.”

“Yeah, no kidding. How have you not all died yet?”

Sarah scowls in the direction of John B’s retreating form. “No fucking idea,” she says mutinously. “Fate clearly has a plan that we cannot divert from.”

“That’s pretty cool.”

“Wish _he_ didn’t know that. I feel like the fear of death can install a lot in a man.”

“I’m sure.”

Sarah elbows her gently. “Well, at least you got your first taste of Pogue madness,” she says, as she starts following the boys towards the bus, briefly spinning on her heel so she can fix Kiara with a look as she walks away. “Told you we take horses very seriously.”

*

According to Wheezie’s planner, the only thing on the agenda for today is the show in the evening, which they are all expected to show up at the venue for at half-past five to set up. Wheezie threatens them all with various intents of bodily harm should they arrive even a minute afterwards.

“She means that literally,” Pope murmurs in Kiara’s ear. “I think there’s a war crime named after her.”

Somehow, Kiara finds this wholly unsurprising.

Because of this, the group has the day off until then. Kiara isn’t quite sure what this means in terms of planning-wise – contractually should they all remain together for appearance purposes? – so she just sits back quietly and watches as Wheezie announces she personally is going to visit a hospital and offer her volunteering services for the day.

“Pretty sure that’s not how it works,” Sarah says.

From where she is half-buried in the handbag slung across her shoulder in an attempt to find her phone, Wheezie snips, “Okay, _Sarah_ , no one asked for your opinion.”

“Yeah, Sarah,” JJ says, “with a bedside manner like hers who wouldn’t want Wheezie to look after them?” and Sarah smirks.

Wheezie either misses or ignores the sarcasm, because when she emerges, hair rumpled, she gives Sarah a look. “See?” she says, like JJ has proved her point. She types something into her phone. “The nearest one is ten minutes away. See you all at five-thirty.”

“Have fun,” Sarah says dryly. Wheezie flips her off as she struts away.

“Never a dull moment,” JJ says, amusedly.

John B watches her retreating form. “I for one think it’s a nice gesture.”

Sarah pats his arm. “I’ll remind you of that when you’re next bed bound and have no one to look after you except her, babe.”

“Well, I’m going to the Science Museum,” Pope says. “Kiara, you wanna come? Apparently there are interactive exhibits.”

Kiara isn’t sure of the politest way to let him down gently. “Really.”

“Totally. Apparently there’s an exhibit about the migration patterns of coyotes. Super interesting stuff, right?”

“Kiara doesn’t want to go to a museum,” John B says. Kiara glances at him to find him wrestling on one of his shoes. “You should come with us, Kie! Me and Sarah are going to try and find a café.”

That sounds even less appealing. “I wouldn’t want to intrude.”

“Oh, you wouldn’t!” John B says. “JJ and Pope come all the time.”

Pope mouths, _it’s always a mistake_.

“That’s... okay,” Kiara says, lamely. “I might just go exploring by myself.”

As she says it, her eyes wander across the group, and she realises while they were talking, JJ has somehow disappeared. He must have slipped out without them noticing to go on his own solitary exploration. Something about the image of him meandering through the streets by himself, hands in his pockets, for some reason makes her want to smile.

John B shrugs, unbothered. “Whatever you say! If you change your mind we’ll be at the coffee shop a few streets away from here.”

Kiara has absolutely zero intention of doing that, but it’s sweet he keeps offering. Next to him, Sarah looks fondly annoyed, like even she’s realised that John B keeps trying to invite Kiara to essentially be a third-wheel on whatever pseudo-date they’re about to embark on. Kiara still honestly has no idea what’s going on between them, whether it’s an official relationship or some unspoken bond, but whatever it is she knows that she does not want to be in an enclosed environment with it for any longer than strictly necessary.

“Why does no one ever want to come to museums with me?” Pope says plaintively. “Museums are cool. I’ll get JJ to come next time.”

“He made his lucky escape,” Sarah says, and laughs when Pope scuffs their shoes together.

Kiara sits by the side and just listens to them as they finish getting ready, pulling on her sneakers. She takes her time, tying and retying the laces of her left shoe three times, just so she can be the last to leave, content to remain on the outskirts as they good-naturedly bicker amongst themselves that betrays the years of familiarity they have between them. Truth be told, she isn’t sure what exactly she’s going to be doing – probably just find a café of her own and get a start on drafting the article – but she can’t say she’s upset that she’ll be spending it alone.

She hadn’t realised just how little privacy a cramped, overcrowded bus would warrant. She’s already seen more dicks in the last twelve hours than she has in the last year, and being an only child, she’s used to having her space and falling asleep alone. It’ll be at nice to get a break from constantly being around other people.

Gradually, Pope, Sarah and John B disperse from the bus; Pope, first, and then Sarah and John B, with a friendly wave goodbye, and John B reminding her one last time they were only down the road. Then, at long last, Kiara is alone again.

She reties her left lace for the fourth time and then, for a few moments, just basks in the quiet, still sat on the floor between bunks, surrounded by other people’s clothes. (She’s pretty sure one of her tops has already ended up in Sarah’s suitcase.) Then, when her ass starts to hurt, she pulls herself back up to her feet and digs her phone out of her back pocket to see where she can go.

A quick Google search brings up a planetarium and string of small restaurants – and a surf shop. She feels a smile stretch across her face just at the sight of it.

She knows she won’t buy anything: she still needs enough for rent and the bus barely has enough room to accommodate her, let alone an eight-foot surfboard. But she grew up in and around surf shops, scrounging up her pocket money for months until she could afford a board of her own, spending her allowance afterwards on surf wax and different coloured ankle tethers. While other girls on sleepovers and shopping trips, Kiara spent all her time at the beach, watching baby turtles hatch or between the waves.

The homesickness has hit her surprisingly hard, in a way she hadn’t anticipated. It’s only been a night but adjusting to a new place, a bus full of people she doesn’t know well, has been hard, and she knows that she just needs time by herself in a familiar environment to recalibrate, get her head on straight.

She can’t show any weakness here. She’s not here to insert herself in, just to hover on the by-line. She doesn’t have room for homesickness.

The surf shop is small and dark and _perfect_. Kiara is immediately seized with a sense of longing as soon as she walks in and the smell of paraffin and lycra hits her nose. It’s relatively empty as far as she can see, just hearing the low murmur of voices near the back, and a man sat at the till scrolling through his phone, and she immediately reaches forward to trail her fingers across one of the boards displayed on the wall.

This is exactly what she needed. She already feels a little better.

She’s just considering the merits of potentially ringing up her dad to see whether or not he’d be amenable to lending her enough money for a new board, despite her not needing one – the bus is small enough as it is, too – when out of the corner of her eye, she catches sight of a flash of blond.

A very, very familiar flash of blond.

She turns on instinct, and sure enough, a few feet away from her, stands JJ. His back is turned, so only the broad expanse of his shoulders is visible as well as the side of his face, lips pursed in concentration as he hunts his way through a revolving rack of surf-related tourist paraphernalia. It’s only a few moments later when he turns the rack around to a side fitted with a mirror that their eyes then meet in the reflection.

 _Fuck_.

She whirls back around, feeling the tips of her ears burn. Fuck fuck fuck. She screws her eyes shut, silently praying that he’s short-sighted, or so much of an asshole that he’s already forgotten what she looks like, but she knows it’s fruitless. From behind her, there is the sound of floorboards creaking as he presumably turns, and then:

“Kiara?”

Kiara mouths _fuck_ to herself, and then turns around with a smile that probably looks more like a grimace. JJ sounds surprised to see her, which would maybe be a little insulting if the feeling wasn’t wholly mutual. He has a baseball cap backwards on his head, tufts of blond hair sticking out the bottom, a wave half-trapped in the loose tri-glide strap, and about five different keyrings slung on his finger, outstretched in front of him. She is so disconcerted at him being here – what are the fucking odds? – that for a few moments she just fish-mouths wordlessly at him, until she is only vaguely aware of her lips saying, of their own accord, “JJ. Hi.”

“Hey.” He seems just as lost as she is. Swings the keyrings around on his finger. “I didn’t know you were coming here.”

“Oh, yeah.” Kiara feels weirdly like she has to explain herself, like she’s been caught doing something forbidden. “I was just... exploring.”

“Me, too.” The dim lighting of the store turns his eyes a dusky, murky blue, like the colour of the ocean whenever she’d swim out far enough and could see it drop off fathoms below where she floated. He tongues at his lower lip, inscrutable. “You didn’t go with the others?”

“Oh, uh.” Kiara puts her hands in her pockets. Fuck, she should have just stayed in the bus, feigned a headache, or needing to get a start on the article. She isn’t meant to be here, getting caught underfoot, being an inconvenience: that’s what she’d fucking _promised_ , to be silent, unobtrusive. Nothing more than a shadow. “No. Pope wanted to go to a museum, and John B and Sarah...”

She trails off, wondering the nicest way to explain why she didn’t want to third-wheel on whatever is going on between them. But luckily JJ must catch her train of thought, because he snorts and turns back to the rack. “Yeah, you dodged a bullet there.”

It doesn’t sound like the definitive end to the conversation, especially with how he spares a glance back over his shoulder at her, so she steps forward until she’s stood next to him, watching as he flicks through the rack. This side, with the mirror, is now just rows of tacky plastic sunglasses, and she notes how JJ smirks a little at a neon orange pair with a dangling moustache.

The silence between them stretches on. JJ seems perfectly content to just stand there in silence, but Kiara can’t help but feel every second that goes by without either of them saying anything like a weight in her stomach. She counts seven long beats before finally she cracks.

“So,” she says. “You think this place gets a lot of customers?”

JJ glances at her. “What do you mean?”

She feels any confidence shrivel up inside her. Fuck. “Uh, well. Not a super famous surfing state, right? Not really sure who’s buying surfboards in Virginia.”

JJ actually smiles a little at that. “I don’t know. I hear Virginia Beach gets some big waves.”

“Oh.”

Okay. Fuck. So that didn’t work. Her mind whirs, trying to come up with any other conversation starters that won’t make her seem totally lame. Why did she even sign up for this? Why is she even here?

She probably would have stayed there all day, silently self-flagellating as she frowned at the rack of fluorescent sunglasses, but just as she’s descending into internal laments of her lack of social prowess JJ says, “You surf?”

Kiara comes out of her reverie with a start, and glances at him. He looks entirely unbothered, trailing his fingers across the sunglasses like he’s taking in each and every one of them.

Carefully she says, “Uh, yeah. You?”

“Depends. Is this on record?”

She frowns. “Why would that matter?”

“Well, need to maintain some of the intrigue.”

“Is surfing your secret talent? Can no one know?”

“I try not to brag about it, you know. Keep it on the DL.”

“Your secret’s safe with me.”

They glance at each other, before they both crack and let out snorts. “I don’t trust that for a second,” JJ says.

“That’s probably wise,” she admits, and he snorts as he turns the rack. This side is now all just magnets. She touches one that says _sea you later!_ so she doesn’t have to look at him when she says, “No, it’s not on record. Off-duty today.”

She risks a glance at him to find him nodding sagely. “Ah,” he says, “so this is small talk.”

“Actually, I’m just trying to lower your defences so I can get the real juicy questions later on,” she says, and JJ barks out a laugh. “But I guess small talk works, too.”

“Well, you’re not being subtle about it. Straight for the hard-hitting ones. Do I surf? Way to get invasive.”

“We can discuss childhood traumas, instead.”

“Ah, now you’re talking. My favourite topic. Do you want them chronologically or in order of long-term emotional repercussion?”

“I sort them alphabetically, you know. Anxiety, bullying, cable-knit sweaters...”

“Very academic.”

“Well, I _am_ a journalist, so...”

They’re both smiling now. JJ flicks the rack round again; this side is keyrings, like the ones he’s got slung on his finger. Kiara reaches out and touches a tacky-looking foam flipflop.

“Are we at a level of friendship that I can know if you surf or not now?” she says, half-teasing. “Now that we’ve exchanged traumas.”

“So long as it’s off the record.” He’s teasing, too. It’s a good look on him: backlit from the sunlight coming through the open door, waves of hair escaping under his hat glowing golden, smile at his lips. She draws an X across her chest.

“Cross my heart.”

“Well, in that case: yeah, I surf. Whenever JB’s dad kicked us out the garage because he got too many noise complaints from the neighbours we’d head down to the beach.”

Kiara can’t help the snort. “Did that happen often? Getting kicked out?”

“You’d think we were snorting cocaine in there, with the way these neighbours reacted.”

“Surely nothing to do with the noise, of course.”

“Of course not, we sounded great. Nothing to complain about. I think we were just surrounded by other musicians who knew they’d never be as good as us. Must’ve given them complexes with how very average we were.”

“Right, of course.” Kiara flicks another keyring; this one is shaped like a sunhat. She is still smiling. She’s never been much good with the social dance – left that to people like Sarah – but something about JJ feels easy. “Where did you surf?”

He glances at her, a smile at the edge of his lips. “Okay, now this is journalist stuff, isn’t it?”

“Maybe a little.”

“Busted.”

“Can’t help it. An instinct, now.”

“Do you do that with your friends? Accidentally find yourself interviewing them?”

Kiara coughs, a little awkwardly. “Uh, no, actually. This’ll be my first proper interview piece.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, so. No pressure, or anything.”

“We should do something really radical that’ll get a lot of clicks.”

“You mean John B’s stunt this morning wasn’t?”

“Not sure _‘The Pogues’ Frontman Falls Off Horse_ is the big title you’re aiming for.”

She laughs. “Yeah, that’s true.” For a few moments, they browse in comfortable silence. “You still haven’t told me where you surfed.”

“Pushy, pushy.” But he’s smiling. “Our usual haunt was the beach closest to JB’s place. So whenever we got the complaint we could just get out of there straight away. One time, though, JB and I snuck onto one of your beaches one time. Pretty disappointing, have to say.”

Kiara grins. “Yeah?”

“Yeah, like, what’s that about? Did you somehow manicure the ocean, too?”

“We actually implemented anti-wave technology,” Kiara says. “The city council got too many complaints from families so they had to put machines under the reefs that controlled the waves.”

JJ narrows his eyes at her for a long moment. “You’re kidding?”

She can’t help the smile that stretches across her face. “Yeah, I am.”

“Oh, fuck off.”

“You so believed it.” 

“Yeah, of course I fucking believed it, you think I know jackshit about wave technology?”

“I thought that was what gave it away.”

“No, your poker face is just shit.”

She laughs, and he jostles their arms together. Aside from yesterday when they’d shaken hands, this is the first time they’ve touched; JJ’s arm is warm from the sun, dusted in golden hair.

“Well,” she says, “you’re not the only one who snuck into enemy territory. I used to visit one of the beaches at the Cut.”

“No way, seriously? Which one?”

“Do you know the beach by The Wreck? The restaurant by the pier?”

“Duh. Best burgers ever.”

Kiara can’t help the small, proud smile. “It’s my dad’s restaurant.”

At that, JJ properly turns to look at her, a disbelieving smile on his face. “Are you serious?” he says, and when Kiara nods, he lets out a laugh. “Dude, the boys and I practically _lived_ there growing up. It was so close to the beach so whenever we’d need food we’d literally just put on our shoes and go. You’re telling me your dad owns the place?”

“He started it. I waitressed there when I was a teenager for some extra money. That’s where I learned to surf, the beach next to it.”

“Me too!” JJ looks struck; turns to the rack with an expression in disbelief on his face. When he next speaks, touching a finger to one of the magnets, _shell-o there!_ , his voice is soft, a little awed. “We probably crossed paths a few times, then, you and I. With us at the same beaches and restaurants and stuff.”

The thought hadn’t occurred to her before. The Outer Banks is by no means small, but it’s not particularly big, either. If Sarah at the Kook Academy had managed to bump into the boys out and about, it makes sense that Kiara had too: she wonders how many times they had passed each other, oblivious. Wonders how there was ever a time that JJ didn’t have the sort of gravitational pull to him like that first night at the concert, eyes bright in the darkness onstage, brow slicked in saltwater like he had just emerged from the ocean, that she could have just walked past.

“I like that idea,” she says.

JJ glances at her. “Yeah? You think we would’ve been friends if we met in high school?”

And _fuck_ no. “God, definitely not.”

JJ barks out a laugh at the ardour in her voice. But Jesus. Kiara’s only semi-pleasant to be around now, and that’s after years of self-improvement. She can’t imagine what JJ would have thought of her when all the worst parts of her were turned up aged sixteen.

“Jesus, don’t sound so thrilled.”

“Believe me, JJ, for both our sakes, it was probably better that way.”

“What were you like?”

“Too much.” JJ snorts. “What about you?

“Oh, you know. Full of teenage rage.”

“Shit, me too. Just so angry at the world.” She snorts, a little wryly. “God. Like teenage Kiara had anything to be angry about.”

She glances at JJ, and is a little surprised to see something complicated cross his face like a shadow. Before she can dwell on it, he just says, “Yeah, I get that,” and turns the rack around again so they’re back to where they started at the sunglasses. The neon orange pair still carry the smudge of his fingerprint against one of the plastic lenses, and he reaches for it with the corner of his T-shirt absently to wipe it off. The silence between them feels almost unsettling, after how easily conversation had moved only a minute earlier, and Kiara feels her shoulders begin to grow rigid again: did she say something wrong? Did she push too hard at this tender, fragile lifeline between the two of them?

But then JJ plucks the sunglasses off the wrack and turns them toward her. “Should I get these for John B?” he says, voice lilting in mischief.

Kiara grins at him, feeling relief flood her veins. “Definitely.”

He returns her smile, eyes warm, and then jangles the row of keychains still threaded on his finger. “Let me just pay, and then we can go?”

And how can she say no? “Okay.”

*

They get back at quarter past five, just as the crew has begun to set up. Kiara half-expects JJ to split from her and go and help, but he just leads her to the back of the venue to sit down against the wall. This one is small too, scarcely bigger than a school hall, only one sells alcohol and has signed posters of various other underground punk bands pasted to the wall. Kiara only recognises a small handful of them; the rest are nondescript in the way a lot of punk bands are, where at least one member has dyed hair and the band name is something like _The Dead Ratz_.

Wordlessly, JJ offers her a headphone as she settles next to him. A little surprised, she accepts, and watches over his shoulder as he scrolls through the albums on his phone for one to play, the screen tilted towards her so she can choose.

She stops him at one she recognises from her time at school. “That one.”

“Yeah?”

“Mm.”

“You know, this was one of my favourite albums growing up.”

“Mine, too.”

He glances at her, visibly delighted. “See, you say we wouldn’t have been friends in school, but the evidence keeps mounting in my favour.”

Kiara rolls her eyes, trying to hide how endeared she is. “Play the album, JJ.”

JJ plays the album.

Pope rolls in at twenty-three minutes past, wearing a T-shirt Kiara is certain he did not leave in. Upon closer inspection, she sees it has the logo of the museum and a picture of the coyote on the front, as well as a sticker saying HOWL YOU DOING?

“Nice shirt,” she says, when he’s in earshot.

Pope glances down at it, clearly pleased with himself. “Do you like the sticker? I got it at the wolf exhibit.”

“I thought it was a coyote exhibit.”

“Apparently the person who writes the website thought the wolves in the pictures were coyotes. What are you listening to?”

“The _Losing Down Monkeys_ self-titled,” JJ says. “You want in?”

“Yeah, play it out loud. You guys up for a quick game of Uno?”

Halfway through the second round of Uno, John B and Sarah make their entrance at five thirty-two. Sarah waves hello to everyone and gives one of Kiara’s curls an affectionate tug before she sails off to the bathroom to do her makeup, and John B sits next in between JJ and Kiara, and is utterly thrilled when JJ hands him the sunglasses.

“JJ,” he says, sounding a little choked up.

“Thought of you, man.”

“These are _sick_ ,” John B says, and puts them on. The glasses, paired with the neckerchief around his throat, makes him look like a J Crew model, or at the very least someone who is both blind and cold. “How’d I look?”

“Very fashionable,” Kiara says. “Hi vis.”

“If you were a cyclist at night I probably wouldn’t drive into you,” Pope offers.

John B seems wholly satisfied with this conclusion.

Despite her graphic threats of bodily harm, by twenty to six Wheezie still hasn’t shown up, and so Pope deals them in for the third round of Uno. John B options out, instead claiming he will be a neutral party. Considering how bloodthirsty Pope is with Uno Kiara is unsure of how neutral anyone can really be, because Pope also has a habit of starting near civil war when the game tips even marginally in the favour of someone who isn’t himself. As it turns out, John B as a neutral party has nothing to do with impartiality and everything about looking at both Kiara and JJ’s cards from where he’s sat between them, and trying (and failing) to be discreet about their hands.

“I’m changing the colour to yellow,” Pope decides.

“Ooh, not so good for you, JJ,” John B says, elbowing him in the side. “You need green.” Then to Kiara: “You have a yellow plus-two, so that’s great for you.”

Pope stares at him, and then looks back down at his card. “Changing it to red, then.”

“Fucking hell, John B,” JJ mutters.

“What? I’m trying to be helpful.”

Wheezie makes her grand appearance a whole twenty-four minutes after she had threatened them to arrive, handbag bulging with what looks like sick bags and plastic cutlery, and then frowns at the sight of them on the floor at the back of the room.

“Excuse me?” she says. “Are we Neanderthals? Where are your chairs?”

“Afternoon, Wheezie,” Pope says. “Good hospital trip?”

Wheezie sniffs indignantly, hiking her bag higher up on her shoulder. “They didn’t let me in the hospital because they found my butter-knife and thought I’d cause physical or psychological harm. I had to go to an old people’s home instead, and it was such a bore. All they wanted to do is talk about themselves and their experiences during the war. Like, I don’t care. Are you playing Uno?”

“I’m winning,” JJ says. “I only have one card left.”

Wheezie frowns, and bends down closer. “I hate the Uno green, they make it so ugly,” she says, half to herself. “Is that a six or a nine?”

JJ throws his card down. “Why do I even _try_.”

“Sorry for trying to help,” she snits. She produces her phone from her bag, sending a shower of plastic forks raining down on Kiara’s head, and squints at the screen. “Is that the time? You all need to be getting ready, tech rehearsal should be starting any minute now. Where’s Sarah?”

“In the bathroom.”

Wheezie swans off without a further word.

“To be resumed,” Pope promises, as he gathers all the Uno cards.

“Not if JB’s next to me,” JJ grouches, and John B looks so affronted Kiara has to laugh.

The three of them stand, stretching their legs. Kiara stays where she’s sat against the wall, holding up JJ’s phone to him from where it was lying next to her. But JJ shakes his head.

“You hold onto it,” he says. “Probably safer with you.”

Kiara grins. “Can I listen to music?”

“You don’t want to listen to us?”

“Need some element of surprise for tonight, don’t I?”

JJ’s smile comes out a little surprised, but sort of bashful as well. “Okay,” he says. “Protect it with your life. Don’t snoop.”

“Who, me?” JJ rolls his eyes at her. She puts a hand over her heart. “Your porn stash is safe with me.”

“Fuck off, Carerra,” he says, kicking at her shoe. She kicks him back. “See you afterwards.”

“See you.” Just as he’s about to turn away, she musters up the courage and calls, “Hey, JJ?”

He half-pivots. “Mm?”

“Thanks. For today. I, uh. Had a really good time.”

JJ’s face softens, and his returning smile is small but pleased. “Me, too,” he says. For a few moments, they just pause there, looking at each other, before he clears his throat and runs a hand through his hair. “Uh, see you later, okay?”

“Yeah, see you.”

She watches him go with a small smile, and then looks back at his prone phone lying in her hands.

Yeah. Today was good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> big big thank u to annie for beta-ing and generally dragging me over the finish line 4 this one. u r almost as cool as steak videos. 
> 
> [tumblr](https://smileymikey.tumblr.com/)

**Author's Note:**

> thank u to annie for beta-ing, helping me come up with the title, and gently bullying me for my overuse of colons. u r the best. also to the gc who never cease to be lovely :-]
> 
> [tumblr](https://smileymikey.tumblr.com/)


End file.
